Monday, December 08, 2008

Kenya PM calls for Mugabe removal

from ABC Australia

As Zimbabwe's humanitarian crisis grows, Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga has called for foreign troops to be sent into the country to oust President Robert Mugabe.

Repeating his previous call for Mr Mugabe to step down, Mr Odinga urged the African Union to hold an emergency summit to formulate a resolution to send troops into Zimbabwe to deal with the crisis.

"We must not fail the dying people of Zimbabwe in this hour of their greatest need ... we must assist them to end this vile dictatorship, we must beg them not to despair," he told a news conference in Nairobi.

Mr Odinga accused other African leaders of shaming the continent by failing to criticise Mr Mugabe.

His comments came after Britain's Anglican Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, used a column in a British Sunday newspaper to also call for foreign troops to be sent to depose Mr Mugabe.

Writing in London's The Observer newspaper, he said "Mugabe and his henchmen" should face trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

"President Robert Mugabe was right when he said only God could remove him. That's exactly what happens. No tyrant lives for ever. No cruel regime lasts. God acts. And he is acting. An international chorus is at last being raised to bring an end to Mugabe's brutal regime," he wrote.

"The time for any negotiated settlement which leaves Mugabe and his regime in power is over. Mugabe has had the opportunity to share power and to restore the land that he brought to ruin. Instead, that path of ruination has become a slope falling away into a humanitarian disaster.

"The time has come for Mugabe to answer for his crimes against humanity, against his countrymen and women and for justice to be done. The winds of change that once brought hope to Zimbabwe and its neighbours have become a hurricane of destruction with the outbreak of cholera, destitution, starvation and systemic abuse of power by the state.

"As a country cries out for justice, we can no longer be inactive to their call. Mugabe and his henchmen must now take their rightful place in the Hague and answer for their actions. The time to remove them from power has come."

Zimbabwe is struggling to cope with an outbreak of cholera which has killed 600 people since August.

Earlier, Zimbabwe's Government accused former colonial ruler Britain of using the cholera epidemic to rally Western support for an invasion of the collapsing southern African nation, a state-run newspaper said.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has branded Mr Mugabe's Government a "blood-stained regime" and said it was responsible for the cholera epidemic that has killed at least 575 people. The world must tell Mugabe "enough is enough", he said.

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