- ROBERT Mugabe has been urged
to consider a plan to rid Zimbabwe of most of its remaining white population
by staging a bombing and then blaming it on "British-funded terrorists".
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- The plan is contained in a document leaked to the British
embassy in Harare. Dated June 8, 2004, it is headed "Solution to the
white problem".
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- It is understood the document was drawn up by advisers
to the director-general of operations in Mr Mugabe's secret police.
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- It calls for the bombing of a strategic economic target
in Zimbabwe that could be blamed on "British-funded terrorists".
Diplomatic relations could then be broken off and British nationals told
to leave within 48 hours or risk being interned as suspected terrorists
or terrorist sympathisers.
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- The document suggests 75 per cent of Zimbabwe's whites
have connections with Britain and would follow British passport holders
who were being expelled. Police "intimidation" at roadblocks
would cause many others to give up their struggle to stay in the country.
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- "We realistically believe that expelling the British
citizens will cause an 80 to 90 per cent drop in the (white) population
within six months," the document says. "If implemented soon,
we could be almost entirely free of them before the final run-up to the
parliamentary elections (next year)."
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- British officials are studying the paper, which purports
to come from an advisory committee working on the instructions of the director-general
in charge of operations at Mr Mugabe's Central Intelligence Organisation.
"The sentiment is not very nice but until we can check it, we don't
want to say any more," a Foreign Office spokesman in London said.
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- The seven-page document is introduced as "the simplest
and quickest method of ridding Zimbabwe of all undesirable whites without
exposing us to an overwhelming backlash".
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- It seizes on a recent warning by Peter Tatchell, a former
Labour parliamentary candidate who once tried to make a citizen's arrest
of Mr Mugabe in London, that the President's opponents in an underground
group called the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement might resort to force.
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- Since Mr Tatchell has threatened sabotage on British
television and the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change,
is shifting from passive to active resistance, the paper reasons an attack
on a fuel depot, bridge or power plant using British-made explosives and
detonators could be blamed on the MDC. Observers believe that if implemented,
such a program of "ethnic cleansing" would produce an exodus
of terrified whites unparalleled in Africa in the past 40 years.
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- © The Australian
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