25 Sep 2009

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has accused the 'imperialist' West of seeking his ouster via the imposition of sanctions and creation of a dictator's image of him.

Speaking to CNN on Thursday ahead of his speech at the UN General Assembly, Robert Mugabe lashed out at the US and the UK for the placing economic sanctions on the sub-Saharan country, exacerbating Zimbabwean drought which has turned the so-called breadbasket of Africa into a state with food problems.

The 85-year-old leader depicted himself as a pioneer on the anti-imperialism front and charged the West with implicating him of authoritarianism.

He also rejected economic and power-sharing predicaments in Zimbabwe and blamed the Western economic embargoes for opposition in the South African state.

"The sanctions must be lifted. We should have no interference from outside," he told CNN.
"The continued imperialist interference in our affairs is affecting our country adversely," added the Zimbabwean president.

When asked about his land reform policies that pushed white farmers out of their properties, Mugabe riposted, "Zimbabwe belongs to the Zimbabweans, pure and simple," adding elsewhere, "They (the white settlers) occupied the land illegally. They seized the land from our people."

"They are British settlers," he went on to say and describing them "citizens by colonization, seizing land from original people and indigenous people of the country."

Mugabe also denied charges of vote-rigging in 2008 presidential election when his ZANU-PF party regained control dashing hopes of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC party) and said, "Elections don't go all that smoothly all the time in many countries."

"Look what happens elsewhere. They didn't go smoothly here, look at what happened during the first term of Bush," he retorted, referring to the controversial 2000 US presidential election where the Democratic candidate Al Gore lost to the then President Gorge W. Bush in a tight race to the White House.

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