US vows continued aid to Zimbabwe, despite criticism

MUTARE, Zimbabwe - Washington will not cut off food aid to Zimbabwe despite criticising President Robert Mugabe's government for human rights abuses, a US envoy said.

"We are not going any place, we are going to continue to help," Tony Hall, the Rome-based US ambassador to the United Nations food agencies told villagers in the district of Mutasa, near Mutare, 265 km southeast of Harare.

Zimbabwe has suffered chronic shortages of food since 2000, with critics pointing largely to the government's seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks, a programme they say has disrupted the important agriculture sector.

"We want to help you get better ... in hopes that the country is going to get strong again," Hall said as villagers, mostly women and children, gathered for food from a programme operated by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and US non-governmental aid organisation AfriCare.

AfriCare's top official in Zimbabwe, Sekai Chikowero, said the programme catered for 444,000 people in Mutare and in the eastern district of Buhera.

"The major challenge that we have is that of an escalating rate of inflation. We are only assisting a fraction of the people who are in need," Chikowero said.

Zimbabwe is struggling with its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, marked by chronic shortages of foreign currency, three-digit inflation and unemployment of more than 70 per cent.

US officials have accused Mugabe's government of ruling through politically motivated violence and intimidation which they say has triggered the collapse of the rule of law.

Hall, who is in Zimbabwe on a three-day fact-finding mission, also toured the country in 2002. Then, he accused the government of using food aid as a political weapon to benefit supporters in a presidential election that returned Mugabe to power for another six years.

Mugabe blames Zimbabwe's economic woes on Western powers, accusing Britain and the United Sates in particular of working to unseat him because of his land policies.

The United States is preparing to send 73,500 tons in aid to southern Africa, and much of that is expected to go to Zimbabwe, once the region's bread basket. At least half of the rural population are estimated to need emergency help and conditions are deteriorating fast in urban areas as well.

Critics say the plight of Zimbabweans has been worsened by a government crackdown on urban slums which the United Nations says left at least 700,000 people without homes, livelihoods or both.

- REUTERS