Mbeki slams US policy on Zimbabwe

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By Agencies

SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki has criticised the United States for listing Zimbabwe as one of the world's "outposts of tyranny", saying his country could help its neighbour hold free elections next month.

In an interview with London's Financial Times, Mbeki said placing Zimbabwe on Washington's list of six renegade nations last month had discredited its proclaimed policy of promoting world freedom.

New U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice named Zimbabwe alongside Cuba, Belarus, Myanmar, Iran and North Korea as "outposts of tyranny" in a recent speech, but Mbeki told the newspaper he did not view Zimbabwe in the same light.

"I think that it's an exaggeration and I think that whatever (the U.S. government) wants to do with regard to that list of six countries, or however many, I think it's really somewhat discredited," Mbeki said.

"To put all these countries together and say Zimbabwe's one of these outposts of tyranny, how do you justify that? It doesn't mean that there's nothing that's gone wrong in Zimbabwe, but to describe it as an outpost of tyranny..."

Critics say Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has hobbled the opposition in a bid to hang onto power and plunged the country into political and economic turmoil through a policy of land redistribution using intimidation and violence.

Zimbabwe will hold parliamentary elections on March 31 amid fresh opposition accusations that the political playing field has already been tilted in Mugabe's favour.

Mbeki has remained steady in his quiet diplomacy approach to solving the crisis in Zimbabwe, despite criticism from the West. He defended his stance, saying he too had at certain times publicly criticised Harare over certain policies but that he respected Mugabe with whom he had "very good" relations.

Mbeki said he supported sending a team from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to monitor the Zimbabwean elections and to help create free and fair polls.

But he indicated that he saw little benefit in overt and public criticism of Mugabe's government.

"We agree that there must be land redistribution but the manner in which it is being handled is incorrect, and the way the conflict has arisen between black Zimbabweans and white Zimbabweans is not what we want," Mbeki said.

"But, you see, to take a posture which would say -- which I think could be quite easy -- we would sit here and say we are gong to shout at the Zimbabweans, that's the beginning and the end of any contribution we would make." - Reuters
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