UK pledges reforms support

Speaking after meeting Zimbabwe’s Education Minister David Coltart in London last Tuesday, UK Foreign Office Minister Lord Howell praised the limited progress made so far by Harare’s coalition government in improving living standards for long-suffering Zimbabweans but said the country was far from improving its human rights and economic track record.

“He assured Minister Coltart of the UK’s continuing assistance to help bolster reform and achieve their aims of a stable, democratic and prosperous Zimbabwe,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement.

Coltart was in London last week at the invitation of the Council for Education in the Commonwealth and the Link  Community Development Trust which organised a conference on challenges faced by Zimbabwe’s education sector.

The UK and other Western powers have withheld budgetary support for Zimbabwe’s 17-month-old coalition government until there is evidence of “concrete progress” in implementing political reforms.

The Western nations have demanded full implementation of a power-sharing agreement between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai as a condition for resumption of budgetary support for Zimbabwe.

Implementation of the agreement has been marred by bickering between Mugabe’s ZANU PF party and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Tsvangirai over appointment of key regime officials and the pace of political reforms.

Relations between Britain and Zimbabwe soured after London and its Western allies imposed visa and financial sanctions on Mugabe and his top lieutenants as punishment for violating human rights, stealing elections and failure to uphold the rule of law.

Mugabe denies the charges and instead accuses Britain of reneging on promises to fund land reform in Zimbabwe and charges that London and its Western allies have funded his opponents in a bid to oust him from power as punishment for seizing white land for redistribution to blacks.