EU to extend sanctions on Zimbabwe - diplomats

By Ingrid Melander

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is set to extend sanctions on
Zimbabwe for another year including an arms embargo, travel ban and asset
freeze on President Robert Mugabe and other top officials, EU diplomats said
on Friday.

The 27-member bloc, which accuses Harare of widespread human rights
violations, plans to go ahead with the move despite the risk that the travel
ban on Mugabe could again scupper longstanding plans for an EU-Africa
summit, they added.

The list of visa bans and freezing of assets includes more than a hundred
ministers and officials. The EU accuses them of human rights violations, and
violations of freedom of speech and assembly in Zimbabwe.

"They will be prolonged for another year," an EU diplomat said of existing
sanctions due to expire on February 20.

"Every year the European Commission does a report on the situation in
Zimbabwe, it has not changed so the conclusions are the same," said an
official at the EU executive.

The sanctions were initially triggered by the controversial distribution of
white-owned commercial farms to mainly landless blacks and Mugabe's disputed
re-election in 2002.

Critics say the seizures have destroyed Zimbabwe's economy, turning the
country from a regional agricultural leader to a nation barely able to feed
itself amid a deepening crisis marked by food and fuel shortages and
inflation above 1,200 percent.

Mugabe says the sanctions are responsible for Zimbabwe's economic crisis and
he says his land policy was necessary because former colonial power Britain
did not make good on promises at the time of Zimbabwe's independence in
1980.

Eldred Masunungure, chairman at University of Zimbabwe's Political Science
Department, said the EU sanctions have failed to reach their objective and
have if anything hit the population of Zimbabwe.

"I think the sanctions by their very nature are a blunt instrument and their
impact tends to spread beyond the target persons," Masunungure said.

"On the government's side they have been felt but as you can see Mugabe has
not changed his policies."

Plans for an EU-Africa Summit have been on hold since 2003 because Britain
and several other EU countries refused to attend if Mugabe was invited,
while African states refused to attend if he was not invited, diplomats
noted on Friday.

"The big issue of course is how to organise this summit," one said, adding
that the EU may try to convince Zimbabwe and other African countries that
Zimbabwe be represented at that summit by a senior official who is not on
the embargo list.

"We will need good political will and some imagination," another said,
noting that Britain and possibly other countries would oppose to a temporary
lift of the visa ban to allow Mugabe to come to an EU-Africa Summit.