In this issue:

Mbeki-Tsvangirai Fight Out in the Open

Zimbabwe Election Results Inconclusive; Runoff Likely

World Bank Starving Zimbabwe

City of London Attack on Zimbabwe Fizzles at UN

U.S. Ambassador Works To Foment Civil War in Kenya

Senegal President Hits Food Handouts; Wants Production

Mbeki-Tsvangirai Fight Out in the Open

May 3 (EIRNS)—South African President Thabo Mbeki's efforts to contain the attempt to knock the Zimbabwe government of President Robert Mugabe out of power, by deploying the opposition faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai, has burst out into the open. Mbeki was designated by the Southern Africa Development Commission (SADC) to be the mediator between Mugabe and the opposition.

According to City Press of news24.com in South Africa, "Mbeki told a delegation of African church leaders that his mediation efforts were being hampered because MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai was a puppet of the West."

In response, Tsvangirai's faction of the opposition MDC yesterday accused Mbeki of having held secret meetings four years ago with members of the MDC party and the ruling Zanu-PF, in an attempt to create a government of national unity that would have excluded Tsvangirai.

According to City Press, the MDC said Mbeki had wanted to form a government of national unity five years ago, in which Zanu-PFs Emmerson Mnangagwa, one of Mugabe's closest allies, would become President, with Mugabe's blessing, and Welshman Ncube of the MDC, would be the prime minister. The plan reportedly collapsed when Tsvangirai found out about it in 2003, and the MDC later split into two camps.

The MDC-Tsvangirai faction, according to City Press, this week informed Mbeki of its decision to cut all ties with him, and accused him of, among other things of being part of the Zanu-PF strategy committee overseeing the resistance against Western and international interference in the conflict between government and opposition in Zimbabwe.

Strive Masiyiwa, an anti-government Zimbabwean who is a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, is working to reunite the two MDC factions so they would be the dominant party in Parliament after the runoff elections.

Zimbabwe Election Results Inconclusive; Runoff Likely

May 2 (EIRNS)—The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) made the official announcement of the election results today. The ZEC announced that opposition leader and British pawn, Morgan Tsvangirai, got 47.8% and President Robert Mugabe got 43.2%. There was a four-week delay between the election and the announcement, due to a demand by Mugabe for a recount. So, although the British and their lackeys had been charging that the purpose of the delay was to allow Mugabe to steal the vote, the final results, according to the ZEC, were in line with expectations. After the elections, no observers—not even the British—maintained that Tsvangirai had won over 50%, the amount necessary to avoid a runoff. And, the ZEC carried out its mission in a week's less time than it took before Supreme Court Justice Scalia appointed George W. Bush as the winner of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election.

The Zimbabwe Independent said today that Tsvangirai will contest the runoff, despite his statements to the contrary, because of a deal worked out between the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC, and a split-off faction of the party. An agreement has been hammered out to get the two groups to combine, so that ZANU-PF would be relegated to being in the opposition in Parliament. Before this agreement, there was only a two-seat difference between Mugabe's Zanu-PF and Tsvangirai's MDC. This agreement called for Tsvangirai to participate in the runoff if he didn't win outright.

It is noteworthy that the agreement between the two MDC factions was facilitated by an exiled Zimbabwe tycoon, Strive Masiyiwa, who is now based in South Africa. He is often referred to as the "Bill Gates of Africa," because he has accumulated a fortune as the pointman for setting up cellphone networks in several African countries. Strive is a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, of which Judith Rodin is president—the same Judith Rodin who appeared in mid-January on the podium in Los Angeles with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, where their Mussolini-like fascist corporatist "infrastructure" policy was laid out.

World Bank Starving Zimbabwe

May 1 (EIRNS)—The World Bank is dangling money in the face of starving Zimbabweans, but won't give them anything unless they capitulate to the economic policies of the City of London. Michael Baxter, World Bank director for the region, who returned from an evaluation mission to Zimbabwe, said the population was in a crisis situation, and that the Bank was ready to organize and extend aid on an emergency basis, once the government gets serious, as reported by Reuters April 30. A Bank spokesman today made the point clearer, in a comment to EIR: "We can't do anything until there is a representative government," meaning a government that will go along with British imperial policy.

City of London Attack on Zimbabwe Fizzles at UN

April 30 (EIRNS)—The British-led efforts by the U.K., the United States, France, and Belgium, and others, to push through a resolution at the UN Security Council to condemn Zimbabwe, call for sending an envoy or fact-finding mission there, and possibly declare an arms embargo against the country, fell flat on its face yesterday evening at a meeting of the Council at UN headquarters in New York. The South African-chaired session opposed the idea, and South Africa was supported by Russia, China, Vietnam, and Libya. These nations did not consider the internal situation in Zimbabwe to be a threat to world peace and security, the criterion for such a resolution.

Today, the New York Times and Washington Post had editorials attacking Mugabe, and singling out South African President Thabo Mbeki for blame for not going along with the witchhunt. Before the UNSC meeting, a senior South African foreign ministry official as good as suggested that Britain had brought the issue to the Security Council "in a deliberate attempt to embarrass South Africa during its April Presidency of the body," according to an allAfrica.com release today. The British Foreign Office later denied the charge.

U.S. Ambassador Works To Foment Civil War in Kenya

April 28 (EIRNS)—The U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, is playing the role of publicly implementing British policy, designed to create the conditions for an ethnic civil war, which would rip Kenya apart.

After protracted violence in Kenya earlier this year, following the Dec. 27 election, the position of Prime Minister was created for opposition leader Raila Odinga, who was finally named to that post on April 13. Ranneberger recently announced a $500,000 commitment to support the development of the Prime Minister's office, according to the Kenyan daily The Standard, yesterday. Ranneberger said, "the role of the Prime Minister is going to be critical. We will work very closely with the Prime Minister in coordinating and supervising the Government" of President Mwai Kibaki, who is from a different, but also large ethnic group, from that of Odinga. "We recognize that critical role, and that is why we are ready to give money to strengthen the office," said Ranneberger.

Ranneberger also provocatively announced that the United States had invited Odinga to Washington "at a mutually convenient date." Ranneberger said Odinga was being invited because of the importance Washington attaches to his role as the one "constitutionally required to supervise and coordinate the activities of government."

Kenyan sources have reported to EIR that two separate executive bodies based on ethnicity can't exist in a country, without tearing it apart.

Senegal President Hits Food Handouts; Wants Production

May 5 (EIRNS)—Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade said on Senegal national radio yesterday, that the UN FAO "is a waste of money and should be scrapped." He said that the FAO is inefficient, and has contributed to the recent worldwide increase of food prices. He said that other organizations do the FAO's work much better, and called the Rome-based FAO, created in 1945, a "bottomless pit of money largely spent on its own functioning with very little effective operations on the ground."

He called instead for the FAO, headed by Senegalese technocrat Jacques Diouf, to be incorporated into a newer UN agency, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, to create a global agriculture-support body, which he said, should be located in Africa. He noted that in the past he had wanted the FAO to move from Rome to Africa, which is the most in need of food. Just last week, a UN conference had put forth an emergency food plan, but Wade was not impressed by it. In Nigeria, bakers are planning a national strike due to high flour and sugar costs.

He wants to replace traditional food aid handouts with "innovative investment in agriculture in Africa" in the form of specialist funding and assistance, giving farmers seeds, fertilizers, equipment, irrigation, and expert training, so food can be produced locally, instead of being received from donors. Wade is an outspoken critic of the "huge swindle" of traditional international food aid, which he says spends more money funding the activities of high-powered technocrats than saving the world's poor.