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  • Mugabe and Castro

    Zimbabwe president, in Cuba, decries IMF

    By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
    ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

    HAVANA -- Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe arrived in Cuba on Saturday, criticizing the International Monetary Fund, even though the organization a day earlier deferred a decision for six months on whether to expel the African nation.

    Mugabe blames Western sanctions and boycotts for many of his country's problems, including 255 percent inflation and 80 percent unemployment, and says powers influential in the IMF have imposed the strictures.

    The international lending organization is "willed by the big powers which dictate what it should do," Mugabe told reporters. "We have never been friends of the IMF and in the future we will never be friends of the IMF."

    But last week Zimbabwe made a surprise $120 million payment on its IMF debt of $295 million and the international lender deferred for six months whether to expel Zimbabwe, saying the arrears payment and economic changes figured in the decision.

    In Harare Saturday, Zimbabwe state radio called the postponement an "achievement against all odds" because of what it said was a campaign against the United States and Britain and others "opposed to Zimbabwe's economic turnaround."

    The European Union, the United States and leading Commonwealth countries including Australia and Canada have imposed sanctions against Mugabe.

    The IMF suspended aid to Zimbabwe in 1999 after disputes over unbudgeted expenditures, the value of its currency and the cost of its participation in the war in Congo. Within a year the World Bank and the African Development Bank followed.

    By 2001, Zimbabwe had stopped making payments on all foreign loans. Two years later, the IMF suspended the country's voting rights and began the process that could lead to the country's expulsion.

    "IMF is almost never a real assistance to developing countries," Mugabe said after arriving on the communist-run island, which withdrew its involvement with the IMF many years ago.

    Mugabe, making his ninth visit to Cuba since 1978, said he was looking forward to meeting with his ally and "brother," President Fidel Castro.

    Zimbabwe's economy has been in free fall since March 31 parliamentary elections, widely seen as fraudulent, gave Mugabe's African National Union-Patriotic Front 55 of parliament's 120 elected seats.

    The IMF board said the deferral gives Zimbabwe with a further opportunity to strengthen its cooperation with the IMF in economic policies and payments.

    http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation...uba%20Zimbabwe

  • #2
    I remember representing South Africa in an African Union simulation. Telling the African continent that Mugabe was a great guy was pretty fun. Plus, I did a good job of it too: Best Delegate, Best Position Paper, Best Resolution.

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    • #3
      Castro and Mugabe! Truely a match made in Hell!

      Castro's Cuba:
      ...Repression of Dissidents

      Cuban authorities continue to treat as criminal offenses nonviolent activities such as meeting to discuss the economy or elections, writing letters to the government, reporting on political or economic developments, speaking to international reporters, or advocating the release of political prisoners. While the number of political prosecutions has diminished in the past few years, Cuban courts continue to try and imprison human rights activists, independent journalists, economists, doctors, and others for the peaceful expression of their views, subjecting them to the Cuban prison system's extremely poor conditions. Even as Cuba released some political prisoners early in 1998—most of whom had completed most of their sentences—continuing trials replenished their numbers. Prison remained a plausible threat to any Cubans considering nonviolent opposition. In the case of four dissident leaders arrested in July 1997 and only tried—for inciting sedition—in March 1999, receiving sentences ranging fromthree and one-half to five years, the arbitrariness of Cuban repression was starkly on display.

      http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/cuba...htm#P355_13934
      Mugabe's Ziimbabwe

      ...The Zimbabwean government has caused untold suffering to poor and vulnerable people. To make matters worse, Mugabe’s government is now delaying the provision of much-needed humanitarian assistance to hundreds of thousands of people affected by the evictions.

      Tiseke Kasambala,
      Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch

      http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/11/zimbab11718.htm
      When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. - Anais Nin

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      • #4
        Africa was better off under colonial rule .... even the UN has admitted so.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by ChrisF202
          Africa was better off under colonial rule .... even the UN has admitted so.
          Or even Aparteid....remember all the Zimbabweans queuing up to enter South Africa for jobs back in the day?

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          • #6
            Castro should be castrated. . It might cool his temperament somewhat. And as for Mugabe............the guy should have been dead years ago,but then zimbabweans are afraid of change...




            We must raise up our glasses against evil forces,singing whiskey for my men and beer for my horses...
            "They want to test our feelings.They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and their newspapers."

            Protester

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            • #7
              I certainly think Mugabe is deserving of "regime change". I guess it all depends on the efforts of Shell and BP :)

              however, in all seriousness, Mugabe could be toppled by South Africa applying some sanctions. So perhaps the non-military option would be to put pressure on SA to do the right thing.
              at

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