Yahoo News 12-22-08
HARARE (AFP) – About half of Zimbabwe's population needs food aid, UN experts said Monday, as a first consignment of supplies designed to help fight a cholera epidemic arrived in the troubled southern African nation.
As President Robert Mugabe faced fresh calls to step down from Western powers, the UN's warning highlighted yet another crisis facing Zimbabwe as it also battles a deadly cholera epidemic and runaway inflation.
And in a further bid to tighten the screw on Mugabe, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she planned to lobby Washington's allies to impose sanctions against the regime in Harare.
"An estimated 5.5 million people may need food assistance," said the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutterhe, in a joint statement from four senior UN officials.
There was "just not enough food" in the country of around 12 million which was once the bread basket of Africa, he added, calling on Zimbabwe's government and the international community for increased help.
In the same statement, the special rapporteur on health rights, Anand Grover said the country's medical services could not control the cholera outbreak, which has killed more than 1,120.
"Zimbabwe's health system has completely collapsed. It cannot control the cholera outbreak which is spreading throughout the country, with a daily increase in the death toll," he said.
As the UN experts sounded the alarm bells, the children's fund UNICEF was delivering its first consignment of aid -- intravenous fluids, drip equipment, essential drugs, midwifery and obstetric kits -- to boost government services in the fight against cholera.
"This is a strategic measure to address a desperate situation," said UNICEF acting representative in Zimbabwe, Roeland Monasch.
Once seen as a post-colonial role model, Zimbabwe's economy has been in a downward spiral since the turn of the decade when thousands of white-owned farms began being seized under a controversial land reform programme.
Food production has since plummetted and inflation has skyrocketed, hitting 231 percent when the last official data was released in August.
Zimbabwe has also been in political crisis since elections in March when the long-ruling ZANU-PF party lost control of parliament and Mugabe was pushed into second place by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in a poll for president.
Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, pulled out of a run-off after scores of his supporters were killed.
A power-sharing agreement signed by the two rivals in September was seen as an opportunity for the country to turn a corner but it has yet to be implemented amid disagreements over the control of key organs of state.
Under the terms of the power-sharing deal, Mugabe would remain president with Tsvangirai becoming prime minister.
But with Mugabe now declaring that Zimbabwe is "mine", both the United States and former colonial power Britain have the deal will be unacceptable as unless the 84-year-old Mugabe leaves office.
"Power-sharing isn't dead but Mugabe has become an absolute impossible obstacle to achieving it," said Britain's Africa minister Mark Malloch Brown.
"He's so distrusted by all sides that I think the Americans are absolutely right, he's going to have to step aside."
Malloch-Brown's comments came a day after the top US diplomat for Africa, Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer, said Washington would not restore aid to the cholera-wracked country unless Mugabe stood down.
In an interview with AFP, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she would consult Washington's allies about imposing international asset freezes and other sanctions against the Mugabe regime which Washington has already put in place.
"I am going to consult with our allies, particularly with some of our African allies and with the British and we will see," Rice said.
"But I think it high time that the international community step up the sanctions on this regime."
Mugabe, who has ruled the southern African nation ever since independence in 1980, has made clear that he has no intention of standing down.
In a defiant weekend speech at ZANU-PF's annual conference, he vowed that he would "never, never surrender" and that "Zimbabwe is mine."
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