Mugabe defends land reforms

President Robert Mugabe

[Harare, Zimbabwe, June 11, 2007] -- Mugabe defended his government's land reforms, a major point of difference with the MDC, which says top government and ruling Zanu (PF) officials have benefited from the land seizures.

The veteran Zimbabwean leader accuses the MDC of seeking to topple him from power with the help of funding from the West and says the opposition is prepared to give back the land to whites.

Critics say the land reforms have decimated commercial agriculture and contributed to food shortages. International aid groups last week said a third of Zimbabwe's population would need food aid by early 2008 after a countrywide crop failure. Mugabe again accused Britain of leading a Western campaign to sabotage the economy as punishment for the land seizures but said the land reform was irreversible.

"It was wrong for Britain to organise the world into tarnishing us, completely disregarding the area of our difference which was the land issue," Mugabe said. "But we knew we were right in what we were doing, we knew we were right in our politics, we knew we were right in taking our land, and indeed right is becoming our might."

Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, today said London had no right to debate Zimbabwe's internal issues in its parliament.