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(HERALD) Biti blasts West over sanctions

Biti blasts West over sanctions
Herald Reporter

FINANCE Minister Tendai Biti says there are no more excuses for Western countries to maintain sanctions against Zimbabwe that see them continue withholding critical aid, according to online media reports.

In a fresh attack on the illegal economic embargo on Zimbabwe, Minister Biti is quoted as saying: "The West is being unscientific and ahistorical." Two banks targeted by the United States for sanctions are set to have them lifted, Minister Biti said in an interview with an unnamed South African newspaper.

He said he had communicated with two US lawmakers during his recent visit to that country and they promised to push for Agribank and Zimbank — now ZB Bank — to be removed from the sanctions list.

"Senator Richard Luga (Indianapolis) wrote asking about sanctions on the two banks, and I said lift them as a matter of urgency."

He pointed out that sanctions on such institutions impacted negatively on ordinary people because they served communal and small-scale farmers in particular.

Minister Biti’s latest attack indicates growing frustrations in the inclusive Government with the West’s manoeuvres for Zimbabwe to descend into chaos instead of normalising relations with the country just because they were intent on pushing President Mugabe out of office.

The minister said: "If this experiment (inclusive Government) fails, we have no cheaper alternative, no cheaper option. I speak as one who knows.

"If the West doesn’t come in, the price of undoing the mess will be much higher, like Liberia, Sierra Leone. Look at the cost to Somalia . . . how will anyone ever reconstruct Somalia?"

Minister Biti met the people behind the sanctions during a recent trip to the US and Britain last month where he urged them to lift the sanctions which have frozen Zimbabwe’s international credit lines and hindered free trade by key companies. In the US, he urged officials in Washington to scrap the sanctions law, the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which blocks US citizens sitting on the boards of international financial institutions from voting to extend any direct financial support to the country.

"I made it very clear that it would be very difficult for us to move when ZIDERA is there," Minister Biti said after the trip.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is expected to travel to Britain, France and the US later this month to rally financial support for the inclusive Government, which needs US$8,3 billion over the next three years to stabilise the economy and fix social services.

PM Tsvangirai is also expected to call on the West to lift the sanctions, as well as do away with travel warnings discouraging their citizens from visiting Zimbabwe.

Labels: SANCTIONS, TENDAI BITI, ZDERA

posted by MrK @ 9:05 PM