Britain withdraws assistance to Zimbabwe

In objection to what it said was the pursuance of wrong economic policies, Britain on Thursday announced it was cancelling a US $5 million package that would have financed operations at Zimbabwe’s privatisation agency, PANA reported. Part of the money had already been disbursed, but a spokesman for the British Embassy said London would now withhold the balance of the funds. The British government notified Zimbabwe of the aid cancellation this week, citing the government’s poor economic policies, through a letter written by Secretary for International Trade Clare Short. Part of the money, pledged in 1999, was intended to strengthen the country’s trade policy capacity building. “We have written to the Zimbabwe government informing them that we are ending our support to the Privatisation Agency and to a Trade Policy Capacity Building programme,” Short told the British Parliament earlier in the week. This is the latest British reprisal against the Zimbabwean government, with whom it has locked horns over a number of bilateral differences, particularly the seizure of farms from whites to resettle landless blacks. London has already imposed an arms embargo on the country, and recently pulled out its military instructors from Zimbabwe, the report said.