Obama Extends Sanctions on Zimbabwe, Says Crisis Unresolved

By Paul Tighe and Brian Latham

March 5 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama extended U.S. sanctions on Zimbabwe for a year, saying the challenge to democracy under President Robert Mugabe is continuing.

Actions and policies of government members have undermined Zimbabwe’s democratic processes and the crisis “has not been resolved,” Obama said in a message to Congress, according to the White House.

The U.S. imposed sanctions in 2003 and extended measures that include the freezing of government assets in 2005 and last year, Obama said in a statement yesterday.

Zimbabwe, ruled by Mugabe since 1980, has seen its economy collapse, resulting in at least 6.9 million people, or more than half of the population, needing emergency food aid, the United Nations says. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai took office as prime minister after his Movement for Democratic Change party joined Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party in a power-sharing government Feb. 13.

The actions of Mugabe’s government “have contributed to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law in Zimbabwe, to politically motivated violence and intimidation, and to political and economic instability in the southern African region,” Obama said in his statement.

Cholera Epidemic

Zimbabwe’s health system is also collapsing amid a cholera epidemic that the World Health Organization says has killed 3,936 people and infected 85,149 by the start of this month. Doctors, nurses and other health workers are quitting because they aren’t being paid, Doctors Without Borders said last month.

Mugabe, 85, extended his rule when Tsvangirai declined to take part in a run-off presidential election last June. The MDC won a parliamentary majority in elections a year ago.

Tsvangirai, in his inaugural address to Parliament in Harare yesterday, called for an end to “brutal suppression” to allow the country to gain access to international aid.

“Brutal suppression, wanton arrests and political persecution impede our ability to rebuild our economy,” he said. “I therefore urge the international community to recognize our efforts and to note progress in this regard, and to match our progress by moving toward the removal of restrictive measures.”

The power-sharing arrangement with Zanu-PF is being threatened by the continued detention of senior MDC officials, Tsvangirai’s party says.

The prime minister said the new government will form a National Economic Council that will include private business and civil society and will take steps to revitalize the mining industry and stop the “wanton disruption” to productive farming. He also promised that security laws will be amended.

To contact the reporters on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net; Brian Latham via the Johannesburg bureau at abolleurs@bloomberg.net.