Zimbabwe govt justifies arms importation
Zimbabwe govt justifies arms importationBy George Chellah in Harare, Zimbabwe
Wednesday April 23, 2008 [04:00]
THE Zimbabwean government has justified its importation of arms saying it has a sovereign right to defend itself against illegal regime change. And the ruling ZANU-PF has predicted a runoff in the presidential election after the vote recount.
Addressing journalists on Monday evening, chairman of the ZANU-PF media sub-committee Patrick Chinamasa, who was flanked by President Robert Mugabe's spokesperson George Charamba, Minister of Policy Implementation Webster Shamu and information deputy minister Bright Matonga among others, said Zimbabwe has a sovereign right to buy military weapons from any legitimate source including Britain.
"And it's our sovereign right to buy weapons from any legitimate sources.
In the past, we have been sourcing weapons from many sources including Britain so I don't understand the hullabaloo. As long as the need arise, we will buy weapons from legitimate sources," Chinamasa said. "It's our sovereign right to defend ourselves and buy weapons from any legitimate source worldwide and we do not need to seek clearance from anybody. You need to appreciate here that there is an agenda, an agenda of illegal regime change. They think they have succeeded but we are a very resilient people."
Chinamasa, who is also justice minister, dismissed reports of politically-motivated violence that is allegedly being perpetrated by ZANU-PF supporters.
"MDC is full of dead people. For them even those that die from natural causes they will claim that they are MDC supporters who have been killed. If there was genocide here could it have missed your cameras? There is no basis whatsoever in those statements from the MDC," Chinamasa said. "It's clear that their imagination is going very wild in order to make themselves a sellable commodity to the capitals they visit."
And Chinamasa said the ruling ZANU-PF was happy that the vote recount was going on smoothly. He said a recount was a legal right that was conferred on all political players in the electoral amendment in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) dialogue between MDC and ZANU-PF.
"The recounting in the 21 of 23 constituencies is at the request of ZANU-PF and the other two is at the request of the MDC. So I am surprised when they say they will boycott the recount. We don't want anyone's vote. Let it go to where it belongs. But we will fight jealously for anyone to get any vote, which was cast for us," Chinamasa said. "For the President, he must get the votes which were cast by his people. We don't want mistaken leaders to emerge from our process. The problems we encountered in the process - some are clerical errors and some are with criminal intentions by some of the people who were running the process. A runoff is certain and ZANU-PF is already geared up for the campaigns."
Chinamasa said ZANU-PF wants accurate and correct results to reflect the will of the people.
"The will of the people cannot be subverted by criminal tampering. Let anyone be satisfied and we will be satisfied if the process reflects the will of the Zimbabwean people," Chinamasa said. "We have been under a barrage of pressure all coming from the Western media and Western intelligence. We are grateful to ZEC that it has been able to withstand the pressure."
Chinamasa also indicated that ZANU-PF was ready to engage South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) and other sister liberation movements in the region over the situation in Zimbabwe.
"Any exchange of information between us is welcome. On our part we also have initiatives to engage them (ANC)," said Chinamasa.
posted by MrK @ 4:04 AM
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