EU awaiting accreditation for observers

The European Union (EU) is awaiting accreditation from the Zimbabwean authorities for the head of their election observer mission, Pierre Schori, EU officials told IRIN on Monday.

Schori, a former Swedish government minister, arrived in Harare on Sunday despite warnings from the Zimbabwean government that Sweden was not one of the nine preferred EU countries from which observers should be drawn to monitor the 9-10 presidential election.

Dismissing media reports of an impending showdown between the Zimbabwean government and the EU delegation, Minister of State for Information Jonathan Moyo was quoted by the official Herald newspaper on Monday as saying: "We do not run our elections according to media reports. As far as we are concerned, we are having an election and not a showdown."

A spokesperson for the European Commission in Brussels, the executive arm of the EU, told IRIN that Schori had arrived in Harare "without any difficulties" and "contacts with the Zimbabwean government continue".

Denying Schori accreditation, or if his team is prevented from doing its job, would trigger EU sanctions. The spokesperson said that "sanctions instruments" would be ready by the middle of the week, but stressed they would only be used "if need be".

Meanwhile, in the mounting political violence ahead of the presidential election, the Bulawayo office of the independent Daily News and a company that had printed opposition campaign material were petrol bombed early on Monday. News reports said little damage was caused. Reuters quoted a Daily News journalist as saying that the bombs were thrown from a moving car.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena told IRIN that although there was "very minimal damage", the police were concerned that "these were the sort of terrorist attacks" that the authorities had warned about in the run-up to the poll. "When you have two petrol bombs in one day, we have that concern," he said.

The Daily News, the country's only independent daily whose coverage is critical of the government, has been a target of attack before. Its printing presses in the capital Harare were destroyed in a bombing in 2001. Government agents were widely blamed for the blast, but a South African was arrested and later released.

In a separate development, the Daily News reported on Monday that an opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) activist was murdered last week in Masvingo, 220 km south of the capital. The newspaper said the death of Henry Moyo, whose body was found floating in the Mucheke river, brought to six the number of people killed in the province since the beginning of the year.

The newspaper quoted witnesses as saying Moyo was beaten and tortured - allegedly by ruling ZANU-PF party supporters - before he died. Bvudzijena said the police were "investigating". But he could not confirm that an unidentified body at Masvingo hospital, that had been recovered from the river, was Moyo's.