Mugabe attacks Big Brother world of Bush and Blair
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 25 (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe launched a blistering attack on the United States and Britain on Tuesday, accusing them of creating a world where powerful Big Brother states imposed their will on weaker ones.
Speaking at a summit of the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Mugabe said U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were imperialists who wanted to impose a new form of colonialism on developing countries.
Mugabe is under fire from the West over the alleged rigging of an election last year and the persecution of political foes as well as the seizure of white-owned farms for landless blacks. The United States and European Union, encouraged by rights groups, have imposed travel, aid and economic sanctions on Zimbabwe.
"Bush and Blair have apparently developed similar war-like dispositions deriving from similar ideologies of new imperialism," Mugabe told the summit.
"The United States, awakened to the implications of being the sole superpower, joined by Britain as a born-again colonialist, and other Western countries have turned themselves into fierce hunting bull-dogs raring to go, as they sniff for more blood, Third World blood."
Blair has been particularly critical of Mugabe, spearheading opposition to the Zimbabwe government in the European Union under pressure from Britain's large expatriate Zimbabwean community.
BIG BROTHER
Mugabe said Blair's actions on Zimbabwe were "irrational."
"He desires and is determined to undermine the sovereignty of my country and introduce neo-colonialist rule. That we shall never allow him to achieve," he said.
Mugabe said his position in Zimbabwe was more legitimate than that of Bush in the United States.
Bush, he said, had only become president after the very close U.S. elections in 2000 because the U.S. Supreme Court, "dominated by Republican judges" imposed him as winner of the polls.
"And is it not ironical that Mr Bush who was not really elected should deny my legitimacy, the legitimacy of President Mugabe, established by many observer groups from Africa and the Third World. Who, in these circumstances, should the world impose sanctions on? Robert Mugabe or George Bush?"
Mugabe said that with the demise of the Cold War, colonialism had assumed a new form "under false economic pretences."
"Politically our sovereignty will not have the same weight as that of Big Brother and Big Brother has the right to determine the justice of our systems and not we his."
He said the Western powers imposed different standards for themselves and others.
"Iraq might have developed or desired to develop arms of mass destruction. But the United States has massive arms of that magnitude. Why can't the United States demonstrate what Iraq should (do) by destroying their own massive heaps first?"
02/24/03 22:39 ET
