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CANBERRA - Zimbabwe's Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai began a Government-sponsored tour of Australia yesterday urging a global anti-apartheid style campaign against the regime of President Robert Mugabe.
His Australian visit, under Canberra's special visitor's programme, is seen as another diplomatic slap in the face for a regime Australia describes as repressive and corrupt.
Tsvangirai's agenda includes a meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, whose May decision to cancel a tour by the Australian cricket team was welcomed by Tsvangirai as a positive step that would ensure international focus remained on his troubled nation.
He will also meet other high-level political figures and address a number of organisations, including a luncheon meeting of the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney tomorrow as part of its distinguished speaker series.
Tsvangirai, who has endured beatings, threats and intimidation by the Mugabe regime, told ABC radio yesterday that the crisis in his homeland was worsening by the day.
"The apartheid struggle was an international struggle," he said. "I believe that this Zimbabwean situation has assumed almost that international crisis stage.
"Therefore the role of the international community, including Australia, is very, very important."
The Harvard-educated Tsvangirai is the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe's largest political party, which was defeated by Mugabe's ZANU-PF party in the deeply flawed and internationally criticised 2005 election.
His invitation to Australia followed steadily increasing opposition to the Mugabe regime in Canberra since its withdrawal from the Commonwealth in 2003 following demands for the restoration of democracy.
Australia retains formal - but severely strained - diplomatic relations with Zimbabwe, introducing a range of smart sanctions beginning in 2002 with visa restrictions on senior officials, a freeze on any assets held in Australia, and the axing of non-humanitarian aid and defence sales.
These were later extended to include visa restrictions on senior management of state-owned enterprises and, this month, a ban on student visas for the children of Government officials or supporters of the Mugabe regime. This initially led to visa cancellations and the deportation of eight children of senior regime officials and the rejection of visa applications by two others.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the move was an extension of measures against people identified as responsible for Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis. "President Mugabe has paid no heed either to international opinion or his own people, and continues to display a complete disregard for democracy and human rights."
Downer said Mugabe's economic policies were destroying Zimbabwe - more than 10,000 per cent inflation - and suppressed those who attempted to speak out.
