Applause as dictator blames Britain and US for Zimbabwe collapse

By Hilary Clarke 
October 18, 2005
Telegraph UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/18/wzim118.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/10/18/ixworld.html

 (Filed: 18/10/2005)
President Mugabe drew applause at a United Nations conference on hunger yesterday when he said Britain and the United States were to blame for his country's economic collapse.
In a diversion from his scripted speech at the World Food Day event organised by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Mr Mugabe called Tony Blair and George W Bush the unholy alliance of the millennium.
  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2005/10/18/wzim118.jpg \* MERGEFORMATINET
 Mr Mugabe makes his point at the World Food Day
He then compared the two world leaders to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and accused them of interfering in the domestic affairs of countries such as his own. 
Mr Mugabe made his attack after a speech in which he patted himself on the back for the long overdue land reforms started five years ago in which land was forcibly taken from white farmers.
The reforms sent the economy, which once provided food for the region, into a tail-spin, leaving it dependent on international aid for survival.
The US alone has donated almost $300 million (£166 million) in food aid to Zimbabwe since 2002.
Mr Mugabe said that if charity comes our way we will use it but that we don't need America and we don't need Britain. The reforms he had introduced were not only an economic empowerment programme of its people, but also the provision of a wealth creating resource, he said.
Four million Zimbabweans, a third of the population, now need rations from the World Food Programme to stay alive.
Mr Mugabe told the conference there have been very unfortunate instances where the provision of humanitarian assistance has been politicised, often on the basis of ideology, race and or religion.
One delegate who did not clap Mr Mugabe was the American ambassador to the food agencies in Rome, Tony Hall.