Farm attacks continue

Zimbabwe’s self-styled war veterans stepped up their siege of white farms on Tuesday as regional leaders met in Harare to try to end the land crisis, news reports said. Arthur Harley, a farmer in Beatrice district near Harare told Reuters by telephone that he and his manager had been forced to barricade themselves in his house for the past three days as militants tried to force him to leave the property.

Another farming official in the northern district of Karoi said militants had threatened three white farmers with knives and knobkerries on Monday night. A CNN television crew working in the area was briefly detained by police and had their tapes confiscated.

The stepped-up attacks came as southern African leaders resumed a second day of talks on Tuesday to help resolve Zimbabwe’s land crisis. The talks were blighted on the first day by war veterans’ threats to keep up farm invasions they started in February 2000 with government approval until “injustices” were rectified. The militants say the invasions are meant to bolster President Robert Mugabe’s controversial drive to seize over two-thirds of the 12 million hectares of white-owned farmland for redistribution to landless blacks.