arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Congressman GREGORY MEEKS
New York 6th Congressional District 1710 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Pone:(202) 225-3461 Fax: (202) 226-4169
Congressman DONALD PAYNE 110 Congressional District 2209 Rayburn House Office Bldg Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-3436
FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL (718) 398-1766 Friends of Zimbabwe 456 Nostrand Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11216

US may intervene to save Zimbabweans
From : The Mail and Guardian
(London) 07 November 2002
The US government warned yesterday that it might take "intrusive, interventionist measures" to deliver food aid directly to millions of famine-hit Zimbabweans if President Robert Mugabe continues to starve his political opponents.
Washington is considering measures that would challenge Zimbabwe's sovereignty, the Guardian was told by Mark Bellamy, the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa.
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"We may have to be prepared to take some very intrusive, interventionist >> measures to ensure aid delivery to Zimbabwe," Mr Bellamy said by telephone >> from Washington.
The plan was disclosed in the Zimbabwean state-owned Herald newspaper under the headline "US plans to invade Harare".
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Bellamy, who develops US policy on Africa, said: "We have disturbing reports of food being used as a political weapon by the Mugabe government, of food aid being diverted and food being denied to millions of opposition supporters.
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He said Mugabe was "holding his people hostage the way Saddam Hussein is holding his people hostage".
Mugabe and other Zimbabwean officials deny using aid as a political weapon. They maintain that food relief is distributed freely and fairly. The government has however outlawed the private importation of food, leaving the state grain marketing board with a monopoly on the importation and wholesale deliveries of the staple maize meal.
Aid agencies and government critics claim that this gives the marketing board a stranglehold on food availability throughout the country.

The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development has failed to get permission to import 100 tons of food aid, which sits at the Beitbridge border post with South Africa. The MDC (opposition party, RC) has also been refused permission to import food.
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Bellamy refused to specify what the US could do to deliver food aid to Zimbabweans against the will of the government, but said the Bush administration was "considering all approaches".
Aid experts suggested the possibility of air drops, such as in Sudan and to Kurdish rebels in Iraq. "At the very least we need to see aggressive, assertive monitoring to ensure that food is being distributed fairly throughout Zimbabwe, in an even-handed, humanitarian way," Bellamy said.
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Washington provides about 50% of the food aid being distributed in Zimbabwe by the UN world food programme.
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Zimbabwe is by far the worst affected of the six southern African countries threatened with famine. Of the 14-million people at risk of starvation throughout southern Africa, 6.7 million are Zimbabwean, nearly half the country's population.
Washington's hard stance comes after other warnings from the Bush administration. The US representative to the UN food and agricultural organisation, Tony Hall, visited Zimbabwe last month and criticised the government for preventing respected international charities, such as Save the Children and Oxfam, from distributing food relief.
The US does not consider Mugabe to be the "democratically legitimate leader of his country", Walter Kansteiner, US assistant secretary of state for Africa, said.
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