Zimbabwe Attack on Dirty Tricks Deflated UK Initiative at UN

June 25, 2008 (LPAC)--Zimbabwe's permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Boniface Chidyausiku, neutralized a British-initiated special meeting of the UN Security Council June 23 when he told the SC meeting "that there have been numerous cases of MDC-T supporters going around dressed in Zanu-PF regalia and beating up people. [Movement for Democratic Change-T is the party of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, and ZANU-PF is the party of President Robert Mugabe].

"This is an outdated strategy used by the Selous Scouts during the liberation struggle," Chidyausiku said, "and with the predominance of Selous Scouts in the MDC-T, it is obvious what is going on." The similarity of the campaign of violence in Zimbabwe during this election period, to the modus operandi of the Selous Scouts during the fight for liberation, was made by LPAC in a release yesterday. Chidyausiku's statement was published in a Zimbabwe Herald article that was posted to the internet by allafrica.com today.

The Selous Scouts were set up in Zimbabwe in the early 1970s by a Rhodesian-born veteran of the British SAS special forces in Malaya, where similar tactics were used in an attempt to destroy nationalist forces fighting the British empire, for independence.

Britain was seeking to have the Security Council pass a resolution declaring the run-off election was illegitimate, and Mugabe, without a run-off, lacks credibility, and to declare that Tsvangirai should be made President.

As a result of the submissions by Chidyausiku and the South African ambassador, the 15-member Security Council decided that it would be legally improper to halt the run-off and install the British-backed Tsvangirai to replace Mugabe, without a run-off, as the British had wanted.

Despite their failure at the UN, the British continue to attempt to whip up a frenzy about Zimbabwe, using Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the run-off (although it is too late to take his name off the ballot), and his supposed seeking of refuge in the Dutch embassy (though reports in Zimbabwe indicate that he is going in and out of the embassy to conduct his various activities, as a pretext for whipping up a propaganda drive to further raise the pressure against Zimbabwe). The British and Dutch are already talking about preparing the use of their respective militaries to evacuate British and Dutch nationals, a development which would further escalate the aura of crisis.

Tsvangirai today called for: the UN to actively isolate the Zimbabwe government; for a military force to be sent to Zimbabwe; and for a new election to be held, with election monitors from the UN and African Union. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is calling for more severe sanctions, which could be used to force British banks and companies dealing with Zimbabwe to cut off their activities, making it more difficult for Zimbabwe, which has been hit with eight years of economic warfare, to survive.

Paul Wolfowitz, the disgraced former president of the World Bank, today in the Wall Street Journal, encouraged the anti-Mugabe forces in Zimbabwe by proposing an offer to make life easy for the country if Mugabe were induced to step down. He proposed providing a face-saving way to leave, after which debt relief and aid would be offered to the country, which, under Mugabe has been subjected to protracted economic warfare because the Zanu-PF government would not go along with the policies of globalization and free trade.