Mugabe, Chavez Team Up To Blame United States, Other Rich Nations for World's Woes

ROME — The leaders of Zimbabwe and Venezuela teamed up at a U.N. hunger forum Monday to blame the United States and other wealthy nations for famine, war and pollution, with the African leader calling President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "unholy men."

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe described Blair and Bush as "two unholy men of our millennium," comparing their alliance in the Iraq war to that of Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in World War II.

"Countries such as the U.S. and Britain have taken it upon themselves to decide for us in the developing world, even to interfere in our domestic affairs and to bring about what they call regime change," Mugabe said.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy, accused "the North American empire" of threatening "all life on the planet." Venezuela is a key oil supplier to the United States, but relations between the two nations are strained.

American delegates said Mugabe and Chavez made a mockery of the forum. But the verbal attacks generated applause from other delegates at the gathering of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The meeting, a day after the United Nations marked World Food Day, commemorated the FAO's 60th anniversary. The organization has 188 members.

"These leaders chose to politicize an event that was meant to be about feeding the hungry people of the world," Tony Hall, the U.S. ambassador to U.N. food agencies, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

"Mugabe, especially, should not have been invited. He would be the last person, I think, an organization should invite to talk about hunger."

Mugabe's government has seized thousands of white-owned commercial farms since 2000 under a land-reform program critics say has crippled Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy and contributed to widespread hunger there. About 4 million Zimbabweans, or a third of the population, urgently need food aid, according to U.N. estimates.

Mugabe defended the seizures as "redressing the past gross imbalances in land ownership which were institutionalized by British colonialism." Until 2000, whites farmed 17 percent of the country and earned most of its export revenue.

Recent constitutional changes in Zimbabwe will prevent white owners from recovering confiscated farms and could be used to strip critics of their passports and right to travel.

The European Union has imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe that include banning Mugabe and other government officials from traveling to EU countries. But an agreement between Italy and the FAO allows all delegations to visit the U.N. agency's headquarters, FAO spokesman Nick Parsons said.

Chavez praised Mugabe's policies, saying the African leader had been "demonized" and that Venezuela was enacting similar reforms to undo "the unfair structures of colonialism."

The Venezuelan government has deployed soldiers to occupy dozens of privately owned farms and food processing plants in recent months while authorities investigate the validity of property titles and inspect lands.

Chavez also railed against climate change, agriculture trade barriers and Third World debt -- all problems he blamed on rich countries. He called on wealthy nations to cancel debt or give poor countries a grace period of at least a year on interest payments.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged rich countries to put hunger on their political agendas while calling on developing nations to root out corruption that often diverts aid.

"Poor countries must give an example of honesty, of ethics, so that we truly deserve the solidarity from millions and millions of people who would like to contribute but sometimes are not sure their money will go where it should go," Silva said.

The U.N. agency said it signed a deal with Brazil to run food programs for children in developing countries around the world.

Source: Associated Press