Belgium in visa snub for Zimbabwe minister

Belgium in visa snub for Zimbabwe minister

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By Staff Reporter

BELGIUM and Luxembourg have denied Zimbabwe's trade minister visas to travel for meetings between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of states.

Both countries are members of the European Union which imposed travel sanctions on Zimbabwe government officials after accusations of vote rigging in parliamentary polls in 2000 and in President Robert Mugabe's re-election two years later.

The government insists it won fairly and that the sanctions are really a retaliation against Mugabe's government over its seizure of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution among blacks it says were dispossessed during British colonialism.

"The Belgian Embassy in Harare and Luxembourg have denied the Minister of Industry and International Trade Comrade Obert Mpofu visas to travel to Brussels and Luxembourg ... for unexplained reasons," the official Herald newspaper said.

It added that the EU travel sanctions did not apply to multilateral meetings like ACP-EU conferences.

"The (visa denials) are unwarranted. This is a matter for the ACP-EU partnership and if an individual country decides to block that arrangement that creates problems," the paper quoted Mpofu as saying.

Government and Belgian embassy officials were not immediately available for comment on Wednesday. Belgium handles Luxembourg's visa matters in Zimbabwe.

In April, Mugabe caused a furore after he shook the hand of Britain's Prince Charles at the funeral of Pope John Paul II, which he was able to attend because the Vatican is not part of the EU.

In 2003 the long-time African leader also sparked a row between Britain and France after French President Jacques Chirac invited him to a Franco-African summit in Paris.

Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, says the sanctions have in effect hit ordinary Zimbabweans as the country grapples an economic crisis he blames on deliberate sabotage by his domestic and foreign opponents.
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