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Zimbabwe's land reform plans suffered a setback when several Western donors froze US $228 million they had pledged for the inception phase of the country's land reform programme, media reports said.
The United States, Norway, Holland, Sweden and the World Bank, who among them had pledged the funds at an international conference in 1998, last week froze the aid because of President Robert Mugabe's refusal to evict squatters who had forcefully occupied about 900 white-owned farms.
Mugabe's government had promised the donors that land reforms would be carried out in an orderly and transparent manner to resettle landless and poor blacks and would be conducted in accordance with the fundamental laws of Zimbabwe. The reports added that the funders are now considering pulling out completely from the land reform programme.
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