Mugabe lashes at US, ‘foolish’ Blair over land

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe lashed out on Thursday at US-led efforts to isolate him internationally, saying his legitimacy did not de...

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe lashed out on Thursday at US-led efforts to isolate him internationally, saying his legitimacy did not depend on foreign approval.

Mugabe’s angry comments, in which he referred to countries like Britain and the US as ‘‘those whites’’, were his first response to a statement by a senior US official that George W. Bush’s administration was working with southern African countries to isolate him.

‘‘We are not made as the government in Washington, let Bush know that. We are made as the government by our people here, let foolish (British Prime Minister Tony Blair) also know that,’’ he told a rally in southwestern Zimbabwe.

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‘‘Today Britain, Australia, New Zealand and America, what colour are they, the people there? Those whites, they are the ones leading in the fight against Zimbabwe, the fight of resisting the completion of the independence process that began in 1980,’’ Mugabe said in remarks broadcast on State television. Mugabe says he is being demonised by Western powers, at the behest of former colonial master Britain, for his controversial drive to seize for landless blacks farms owned by whites who hold 70 per cent of Zimbabwe’s best farmland.

The US said on Tuesday it did not consider Mugabe, who won a controversial election in March, a legitimate leader and was working with governments in the region to isolate him. (Reuters)