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UN scolded for allowing Mugabe to attend food crisis conference
Elisabetta Povoledo and Alan Cowell, International Herald Tribune
June 02, 2008

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/02/africa/zimbabwe.php

ROME: Skirting some restrictions on his international travel, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe arrived in Rome over the weekend to attend a United Nations food conference, raising protests Monday from several participants.

The Australian foreign minister, Stephen Smith, who was scheduled to attend the conference, which runs Tuesday through Thursday, called Mugabe's presence "frankly obscene."

But the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, which convened the gathering, brusquely rejected the criticism.

"The fact that Mugabe and other leaders the West may not approve of are attending a UN meeting in Rome is not a scandal," said Nick Parsons, a spokesman for the organization. "The UN is about inclusiveness, not exclusivity, giving all nations the right to participate."

Parsons said that "in the face of the looming, impending food crisis that FAO first warned about a year ago," a high-level meeting between countries "is the serious issue."

He added: "The rest is irrelevant to the overall significance of what this meeting is about."

Mugabe landed in the Italian capital Sunday night with little fanfare, leaving Zimbabwe midway through a bitter presidential election campaign before a run-off vote scheduled for June 27 against his rival, the opposition party's presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Tsvangirai complained last week that he had been prohibited by the police from staging election rallies until after the vote.

Opposition officials in Zimbabwe said over the weekend that two prominent politicians were arrested in their homes, amid signs that the governing party is determined to cling to power.

In theory, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa is mediating in the Zimbabwe dispute on behalf of southern African nations. But Tsvangirai has registered growing disenchantment with Mbeki's contributions.

In a letter said to have been written to Mbeki on May 13 and made public Monday by his party, Tsvangirai said that when the South African leader began his mediation, "Zimbabwe still had a functioning economy, millions of our citizens had not fled to other countries to escape political and economic crisis, and tens of thousands had not yet died from impoverishment and disease."

The letter added: "With respect, if we continue like this, there will be no country left."

It accused Mbeki of a "lack of neutrality" and asked him to "recuse" himself from his role as the "exclusive mediator of our nation's crisis."

The four-page letter catalogued a series of instances in which Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change found Mbeki's involvement objectionable and said it was not the first time the opposition had urged Mbeki to withdraw.

A South African government spokesman, however, denied that Mbeki had received any letter.

Mugabe made no comment to reporters when he arrived in Rome on Sunday with his wife, Grace, and a large delegation of officials.

The European Union has formally barred Mugabe from traveling to its member states, but Zimbabwean officials claim an exemption for UN events.

Neil Parrish, a member of the European Parliament from the opposition Conservatives of Britain, said it was ironic that Mugabe planned to attend a conference on the global food crisis when his policies had targeted commercial white farmers, driving them off productive land.

Parrish told the BBC that Mugabe was trying to project himself as an international statesman, burnishing his image even while "driving people away from their homes" to prevent them from voting. "Why the United Nations allows him to come, I can't believe it," he said.

In Sydney, Smith, the Australian official, said: "This is the person who has presided over the starvation of his people. This is the person who has used food aid in a politically motivated way. So Robert Mugabe turning up to a conference dealing with food security or food issues is, in my view, frankly obscene."

*Alan Cowell reported from London. Celia Dugger contributed reporting from Johannesburg.

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