US-sanctions remain in place

The United States have once more told Zimbabwe to restore the rule of law and stop human rights violations before sanctions imposed on the country can be reviewed. “We really can't lift the sanctions at this time,” Susan Page, deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa, told reporters after meeting a Zimbabwean delegation on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. “We regularly review these sanctions,” she added. “But frankly as long as these violations of human rights, this lack of respect for civilian and political rights of the people of Zimbabwe, as long as they continue,” the sanctions must remain, Page emhasised.

“The sanctions are targeted, the targets are individuals and a few institutions that we believe have been responsible for the policies and the actions that have to led to Zimbabwe's both economic and political decline,” she said.
Mugabe, 86, and his aides are banned from travelling and their assets have been frozen since 2002 by the European Union and the United States, accusing his regime of repeated human rights abuses and denials of basic freedoms. On August 20, he asked that his rival in the Movement for Democratic Change, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, appeal for a lifting of sanctions. Addressing delegates at the United Nations plenary meeting on Millennium Development Goals in New York, Mugabe blamed what he called ‘illegal and debilitating sanctions’ for Zimbabwe’s failure to cut poverty and hunger. US Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson told the Zimbabwean delegation that included representatives from Zanu PF and the two MDC formations that the coalition needed to do more for the embargo to be removed. (Zimbabwe Standard)