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30. 10. 09. - 15:00

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30. 10. 09. - 15:00

Austrian UN official prevented from visiting Zimbabwe

By Lisa Chapman

Austrian UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak has been stopped from visiting Zimbabwe, it emerged today (Fri).

Nowak was stopped from leaving the airport near the capital Harare on Wednesday night after jetting in answer an invitation from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

He spent the night at the airport and was forced to take the first flight to South Africa on Thursday morning.

Nowak was incensed after the incident. "That had never happened to me before. No other government has treated me that way. This serious diplomatic incident will naturally have consequences," he told Austrian newspaper Kurier.

Nowak added that Tsvangirai had sent a delegation to the airport to meet him but it had been told once it got there that he had not been on the flight in question.

He said his fact-finding mission about the human-rights situation in Zimbabwe would have been a step in the direction of resumption of development cooperation with that country, which has been under sanctions since 2002 because of its dictator President Robert Mugabe’s behaviour.

He said the European Union and the USA had intervened in vain on his behalf while he was at the airport.

He explained: "The regime kicked in the head the very countries that were in principle prepared to help Zimbabwe. My mission is definitively dead."

The European Union has contributed 572 million Euros in humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe since 2002.

Observers say the country is in a catastrophic state with 90 per cent of its 11 million people unemployed, and 75 per cent of them living on the equivalent of one US dollar a day. Inflation reached 230 million per cent last year, and the economy has become based on barter.

Austrian Times

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