Farmers call special congress on land reform

The union representing Zimbabwe's white farmers has decided to meet next month to debate how to break the impasse over the government's controversial land reform scheme, AFP said on Thursday. "I recognize that the government and the CFU are deadlocked over the land issue to the detriment of the nation," Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) president Tim Henwood was quoted as saying in a statement. "I will be encouraging my members to become part of the solution to land reform ... I urge all stakeholders in this sensitive and emotional issue to urgently come to the table in order to reach common ground so that the nation can move forward," he added.

The CFU has in recent weeks successfully challenged in court President Robert Mugabe's plan to resettle five million hectares of white-owned farmland with historically disadvantaged black communal farmers. A recent court ruling ordered police to evict war veterans who had invaded hundreds of white-owned farms during the last year.