Belgium grants visa to Zim's finance minister

Belgium grants visa to Zim's finance minister

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By Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWE'S finance minister will be allowed to travel to Belgium this week to meet African and Caribbean peers despite a European Union-wide ban on visas for officials from his country.

The EU in January extended for another 12 months a series of sanctions including an arms embargo and travel ban against officials from Zimbabwe, which the bloc accuses of violating human rights, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

But Belgium has granted a visa to Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa to allow him to attend a meeting of ministers from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific on Thursday and Friday in Brussels, the Belgian Foreign Ministry said.

"Within the EU sanctions there is a provision saying that for this kind of meeting, visas can be delivered," a ministry spokesman said.

The other EU countries have been informed and there was a consensus on granting the visa, the spokesman said, adding that Murerwa would not meet Belgian officials.

The EU list of visa bans and freezing of assets includes President Robert Mugabe and more than a hundred ministers and officials.

The sanctions were initially triggered by Zimbabwe's controversial land redistribution plan, which confiscated white-owned commercial farms, and Mugabe's disputed re-election in 2002.

Zimbabwe's white farmers said last week they had been invited to apply for land, a move that could mark a policy shift by the government which had vowed not to return seized farms.

Critics say the land seizures have reduced Zimbabwe's commercial agriculture by 40 percent, hitting exports and partly causing food shortages that have gripped the country since 2001.

Agriculture output fell by 12.8 percent in 2005, but government officials say the sector will grow by 9 percent this year, boosting the ailing economy.

Zimbabwe is in the throes of a deepening economic crisis, highlighted by shortages of foreign exchange, fuel and food, the world's highest inflation rate at 917 percent and 70 percent unemployment. - Reuters
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