"Third World stance at UN commendable"

THE defeat of a Western-sponsored motion at the UN General Assembly to censure Zimbabwe over alleged human rights abuses shows that the developing countries have seen through British machinations to manipulate a bilateral dispute into an international issue.

Ever since the Government embarked on the land reform programme to address colonial imbalances in the ownership of land, the British Labour government under Tony Blair has lead a spirited campaign to have Harare isolated.

Instead of providing funds for land reform as promised at the Lancaster House conference in 1979, the British government has at numerous international fora tried, by hook or crook, to have Zimbabwe condemned, but all this has been to no avail.

We commend the stance taken by Third World countries at the UN General Assembly in New York last week when they vetoed a draft resolution presented at the 59th session of the Third Committee of the General Assembly.

The draft resolution was vetoed by 92 countries against 72 who supported it.

According to reports from New York, Britain had used a fellow EU member country, the Netherlands, and Australia to put the motion on the agenda but the African bloc, led by South Africa, which is the co-ordinator of the continental group, moved a no-action motion on the draft resolution.

Indeed Third World countries, just like in the past, should be commended for standing by a fellow developing country against the bullying tactics of the rich and powerful nations which have in the past bulldozed their way into the internal affairs of poor nations and plundered their resources.

Zimbabwe's "crime" to the rich and powerful nations, led by Britain and her allies, has been to reclaim her resources and redistribute them among her people, particularly the majority blacks who were deprived of the resource during colonialism.

And in a bid to protect her kith and kin who had since independence in 1980 continued to own vast tracts of all productive land in Zimbabwe despite the fact that they were the minority, the Tony Blair government cried foul and began to take every opportunity to have Zimbabwe's image tarnished.

Thus we saw an unprecedented media onslaught on Zimbabwe, with the most absurd and biased coverage ever witnessed anywhere in the world.

The defeat of the British/European Union-sponsored resolution should be a lesson to the rich and powerful nations that they just cannot eat their cake and have it too.

For the "little" nations now know better and have seen through the sinister motives of the "big" nations, especially after the invasion of Iraq where up to now they still haven't found the weapons of mass destruction they claimed Saddam Hussein possessed.

The Third World countries now know that today the same forces using weapons of mass deception against Zimbabwe could tomor- row be focused on either one of them.

The defeat of the British motion should also be a victory, not just for Zimbabwe, but for Third World solidarity.

Reprinted from: www.zimbabweherald.com