Mugabe denounces IMF on Cuban visit

Mugabe denounces IMF on Cuban visit

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By Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe, arriving on a state visit to Cuba on Saturday, lashed out at the International Monetary Fund for its policy on developing countries.

"We have never been friends with the IMF, and in the future we will never be friends of the IMF," he said.

His remarks came a day after the IMF granted a 6-month stay on a ruling to expel the Southern African country, based on unpaid debts.

Mugabe claimed the fund is "willed by the big powers which dictate what it should do," and denounced it as "almost never a real assistance to developing countries."

Zimbabwe has been in arrears with the IMF since February 2001 because of a failure to pay interest on $4.5 billion borrowed.

Last week, Zimbabwe made a surprise $120 million payment on its IMF debt of $295 million and the international lender deferred for six months whether to expel Zimbabwe, saying the arrears payment and economic changes figured in the decision.

In Harare Saturday, Zimbabwe state radio called the postponement an "achievement against all odds" because of what it said was a campaign by the United States and Britain and others "opposed to Zimbabwe's economic turnaround."

Mugabe blames Western sanctions and boycotts for many of his country's problems, including 255 percent inflation and 80 percent unemployment, and says powers influential in the IMF have imposed the strictures. The European Union, the United States and leading Commonwealth countries including Australia and Canada have imposed sanctions against Mugabe.

The IMF suspended aid to Zimbabwe in 1999 after disputes over unbudgeted expenditures, the value of its currency and the cost of its participation in the war in Congo. Within a year the World Bank and the African Development Bank followed.

By 2001, Zimbabwe had stopped making payments on all foreign loans. Two years later, the IMF suspended the country's voting rights and began the process that could lead to the country's expulsion.

Mugabe, making his ninth visit to Cuba since 1978, said he was looking forward to meeting with his ally and "brother," President Fidel Castro.
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