IMF should “shut up” - Mugabe

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe this week delivered a blistering attack on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for placing a US $193 million aid package on hold over the country’s military intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In remarks at a news conference in Paris after talks with President Jacques Chirac which were broadcast widely at home on Friday, Mugabe said: “The IMF should shut up its mouth. Yes, we have spent money in DRC, but we have not died because of that. We continue to be productive.” Mugabe, who had earlier addressed the annual conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), accused the IMF of attacking Zimbabwe’s presence in the DRC even though it was not the only country which had sent in troops to save the government of President Laurent-Desire Kabila in a war against Ugandan and Rwandan-backed rebels. Last week, an IMF team visited Zimbabwe to check a report by the ‘Financial Times’ of London that Zimbabwe may have misled the agency on the cost of its Congo spending to gain financial support as it grapples with its worst economic crisis in the two decades Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF party have been in power. A spokesman for Mugabe told IRIN this week that the country was currently deploying some 10,000 troops in Congo at a cost of US $3 million a month. However, the ‘Financial Times’ said an internal government memo obtained by the newspaper put the cost at US $166 million between January and June. After the departure of the IMF team at the weekend, the lending agency’s Harare office has declined all comment on the affair. The World Bank and the European Union are also withholding their aid until Zimbabwe gets its IMF programme back on track. Mugabe told the news conference that IMF and World Bank-backed economic programmes since 1991 had caused “untold suffering for the majority of Zimbabweans”. Mugabe added: “Our soldiers will go out of the DRC when the right stage comes for us to get out. We have not only assisted in the DRC. We were in Mozambique for seven years. Yes, we have spent money in DRC, but we have not died because of that, we continue to be productive. “There is very little fighting in the DRC now, but we need a facilitator for more dialogue in which the people of Congo must also participate,” Mugabe said. He had earlier told business leaders in France that Zimbabwe, with Namibia, Angola and Chad had moved into Congo with the express authority of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Mugabe, who is chairman of the SADC political, security and defence arm, said the intervention had been decided after thorough consultations with regional partners.