(NEWZIMBABWE) Biti: Tsvangirai China loan claim not true

Biti: Tsvangirai China loan claim not true
by Lebo Nkatazo
04/07/2009 00:00:00

PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was publicly humiliated on Friday after Finance Minister Tendai Biti said he LIED over a US$950 million credit line from China.

"There's no foundation at all in reports that we have received $950 million from China," Biti told a press conference on Friday. The denial was a devastating attack on Tsvangirai who in the last month has been forced to twice dismiss statements by his own officials.

Returning from a three-week trip to western capitals to raise financial support for the unity government, Tsvangirai told diplomats and government officials on Tuesday: “While I was away, the government, through Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, also secured lines of credit from China totalling US$950 million.”

Not true, Biti told reporters at the hastily called press conference which the minister also used to rubbish a report in Friday’s Zimbabwe Independent newspaper that Zimbabwe will receive US$5 billion in loans from China in return for some platinum concessions.

Biti’s public denial of a statement by Tsvangirai, his leader in the Movement for Democratic Change, will fuel tensions in the party with senior officials privately admitting to the existence of “two centres of power” – with Biti on one end and Tsvangirai on the other.

Biti’s camp is filled with MDC “hawks” – officials who want a hard-line stance in dealing with Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF while Tsvangirai’s camp says that approach has been tried, and it failed spectacularly while the country suffered.

“Tsvangirai is content to ease Zanu PF out of power but there are some in the party who were never happy with this unity government and will continue to gnaw at him, at his authority,” said one official.

While travelling in Europe, the Prime Minister was forced to deny comments by National Healing Minister Sekai Holland who told the BBC: "No-one feels safe in Zimbabwe, no-one - and I mean no-one. We haven't reached a ceasefire. We are still at a point where people have their guns cocked.

“We are told that they do have a list of people that they will kill.”

The mistimed comments came as the Prime Minister was trying to present a picture of progress after he agreed to join a unity government with Mugabe and Arthur Mutambara in February.

Tsvangirai said in reply: “I can't judge how she came to that conclusion. If there's anyone who is supposed to be threatened, it's me, and I can confirm that there's never been any threat of my life ever since the formation of the inclusive government. There has been a substantial decrease in those kind of activities.”

And just as he arrived back in Zimbabwe on Monday, his ministers had decided to boycott a Cabinet meeting. His deputy Thokozani Khupe told journalists: “It is our constitutional right to consider disengagement (from the unity government).”

A day later, Tsvangirai said the coalition with Mugabe “is in no danger of collapsing”, despite frustrations with the slow pace of reform.

The MDC also publicly censured one of its MPs this week for taking the government line that there were no mass killings by state security agents in the Chiadzwa diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe.

Harare Central MP Murisi Zwizwai, who is also Mines and Mining Development Deputy Minister, told a meeting of the Kimberley Process in Namibia last week that “contrary to allegations in the media, nobody was killed by security forces during an operation at Marange”.

In an extraordinary move, a statement issued by the MDC condemned the deputy minister’s remarks as “premature and inaccurate”. It added: “Hon Zwizwai’s claims are therefore fact-hostile and evidence-free.”