Mugabe cronies' U.S. assets frozen

Mugabe cronies' U.S. assets frozen
Published November 24, 2005

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush is targeting the U.S. accounts
of leading government officials and others in Zimbabwe, saying those
who work to support President Robert Mugabe must restore democracy or
face sanctions.
The White House announced yesterday that Mr. Bush had signed an
executive order Tuesday blocking all property and financial holdings in
the United States owned by 128 persons and 33 farms and businesses in
Zimbabwe. It also bars U.S. citizens from having financial dealings
with them.
"This action is not aimed at the people of Zimbabwe, but rather at
those most responsible for their plight," said White House spokeswoman
Dana Perino.
Mr. Bush already had issued sanctions against Mr. Mugabe and 76
other officials under an executive order signed in March 2003.
Tuesday's order included 75 from that list and added 53 others, and it
applied sanctions to their immediate family members. It also allows the
secretary of state and Treasury secretary to expand the list without a
presidential order.
Mr. Bush said that since the first order, conditions in Zimbabwe
had continued to deteriorate.
"The government continues to suppress opposition groups and civil
society, undermine the independent media, ignore decisions by its
courts, and refuse to enter into meaningful negotiations with other
political actors," Mr. Bush wrote in a letter to congressional leaders.
"Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections in March 2005 were not free or
fair. Recent demolitions of low-income housing and informal markets
have caused 700,000 people to lose their homes, jobs, or both.
Additional measures are required to promote democratic change."
The United States has refused to recognize Mr. Mugabe as winner of
March's presidential election, which was widely seen as rigged.
Mr. Mugabe led Zimbabwe to independence from Britain in 1980 and
had its name changed from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, harking back to a great
city in the country built by an advanced ancient culture. Mr. Mugabe
has become increasingly authoritarian, spearheading press controls and
takeovers of white-owned farms.
Those and other policies have led to Zimbabwe's increasing
international isolation and raised criticism from opponents at home.
Mr. Mugabe's government has seized thousands of white-owned
commercial farms since 2000 under a land-reform program critics say has
crippled Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy and contributed to
widespread hunger there. About 4 million Zimbabweans, or a third of the
population, urgently need food aid, according to U.N. estimates.
Mr. Mugabe defended the seizures as "redressing the past gross
imbalances in land ownership, which were institutionalized by British
colonialism." Until 2000, whites farmed 17 percent of the country and
earned most of its export revenue.
Recent constitutional changes in Zimbabwe will prevent white owners
from recovering confiscated farms and could be used to strip critics of
their passports and right to travel.

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