By Cris Chinaka
HARARE (Reuters)--Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, his country on the brink of chaos, all but threatened to go to war with Britain Wednesday over the occupation of white-owned farms.
Meanwhile opposition leaders and white farmers reported a wave of arson attacks and assaults by Mugabe's supporters. One opposition chief accused the government of orchestrating the growing violence, which has claimed at least two lives.
An estimated 3,000 veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s liberation struggle have occupied about 600 white-owned farms to support claims for the redistribution of prime land taken by whites under British colonial rule.
Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, says any compensation is for Britain to pay.
Opposition sources and farmers who asked not to be identified told Reuters of petrol-bomb attacks and beatings east, north and west of the capital Harare during the night.
Speaking during a stopover in Nairobi on his return from the Europe-Africa summit in Cairo, Mugabe said he had told British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook that Zimbabwe was prepared for war over the issue of white farms.
``If they (Britain) are on the war path, I told him we will defend ourselves and if need be we can go back to the trenches,'' he told Zimbabwean Television. ``If they want a war to go on, well they will have only themselves to blame.''
Britain has accused Mugabe of undermining the resettlement program by giving land to his ``cronies'' instead of poor people who need it most, and has criticized his failure to condemn the occupations.
Mugabe shrugged off Britain's appeals for a diplomatic solution, saying he would not be swayed by its global stature. He suggested his army was more than capable of handling Britain's forces.
``They were (a military might) when we got the land from them in the first place,'' he said.
Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told supporters the current violence was threatening a parliamentary election due in May.
The police confirmed two deaths--a pregnant woman died on Sunday after clashes in the town of Bindura and a policeman was shot dead Tuesday on a white-owned farm.
The MDC said some of its supporters had been forced to flee their homes. It said several people had been killed and others tortured and raped in the past month.
``We have a chronology of violence perpetrated by ZANU-PF (Mugabe's party) against MDC. This is orchestrated by the government to induce fear and intimidation among voters. It is a strategy of subduing the people of Zimbabwe into submission,'' Tsvangirai said.
A group of churches, the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, cautioned: ``Unless the government upholds the rule of law by bringing to book those who practice all forms of violence, the nation will slide into anarchy.''
Eight policemen were ambushed late Tuesday and their automatic rifles seized when they tried to investigate a reported assault on a farm northeast of the capital.
The sources said the policemen were being held hostage by war veterans who had occupied the farm. Two other farmers were reportedly being detained in their homesteads by invaders.
The police department declined to comment.
Britain has contingency plans to take in 20,000 Zimbabwean whites with British passports if attacks on them worsen.
Mugabe has said the war veterans were entitled to seize farms after voters in a referendum in February overwhelmingly rejected his proposed new constitution which would have authorized the seizure of farms without compensation.
Tuesday, Zimbabwe's parliament began debating a bill to amend the constitution to let the government acquire white farms, with responsibility for compensation falling on Britain.
Mugabe had told the state-run news agency ZIANA during his flight from Cairo that he was willing to send a delegation to London for talks, and that Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo had agreed to mediate in the dispute.
(text of April 5, 2000 Yahoo! News World Headlines article)
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