35 African Leaders Urge US to Stop Interference of Zimbabwe's AffairsA majority of African heads of state have made representations to the United States Congress to stop passing the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Bill of 2001, Zimbabwe News Agency reported on Wednesday.A total of 35 out of the 48 heads of state with diplomatic representation in Washington last Friday had instructed their envoys to sign an appeal to the Congress "to dissuade the American legislators from passing the Bill that would impose sanctions against Zimbabwe". The African heads of state were following up on an Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit Declaration last July which observed that the proposed Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Bill will prohibit assistance or debt relief to Zimbabwe by international financial institutions where the U.S. is a powerful member. The African ambassadors endorsed 10 reasons given by the OAU for not supporting the Bill, saying that economic sanctions would hurt poor Zimbabweans most and disrupt economies of neighboring countries and that the Bill sought to influence Zimbabwe's domestic policies. "Furthermore, these measures lose sight of the fact that political and social tension in Zimbabwe today stems from the unresolved colonial land division whereby 4,500 white farmers, mostly of British origin, still hold 60 percent of the best farming land to the exclusion of millions of landless and unemployed indigenous African whose grandfathers were driven from those lands without compensation," said the ambassadors. They said Zimbabwe remained committed to the principles of democracy in spite of the political and social disturbances. "The disagreements between the executive and the judiciary have been resolved by mutual agreement," the ambassadors said. President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Morgan Tsvangirai's opposition Movement for Democratic Change were capable of resolving their differences through dialogue since both parties were responsible for the violence in the country, they added. |
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