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By Staff Reporter

TONY Blair on Wednesday shot down claims by a Zimbabwe government minister that relations between the two countries would improve with Gordon Brown in power, calling President Robert Mugabe and his regime a "disgrace" that had brought the country to its knees.

Answering questions in his weekly PM Question Time, Blair was asked why Western governments appeared powerless to prevent a "human tragedy" in the southern African country.

Blair said: "What the regime is doing in Zimbabwe is a disgrace.

"There are people suffering there in a country that is potentially wealthy.

"We have had ourselves as a nation to actually give humanitarian assistance to people and food aid assistance in circumstances where if the country were properly run the people could be looked after there and looked after properly."

Blair agreed that more needed to be done for Zimbabwe.

On Tuesday, Zimbabwe's Information Minister Tichaona Jokonya claimed that there were better prospects of improving relations between Britain and Zimbabwe if Chancellor Brown succeeded Blair.

Jokonya said: "In fact, it is up to Tony Blair but I suspect relations will significantly improve if Brown becomes Prime Minister.

“Brown is no American puppet, and besides, most of Europe is realising they have been kept out of Zimbabwe business wise."

Zimbabwe's inflation is at 913%, and, according to a recent World Health Organisation assessment, female life expectancy in the country is the lowest in the world at 34.

He said London was right to continue to exert diplomatic pressure on Harare, but he also acknowledged that finding a lasting, effective solution was more difficult.

Blair said: "The only issue is what we can do about it and what we are doing from this country is our very best to try and get the right diplomatic pressure on the Zimbabwean regime to change but there is, I am afraid, a limit to what we can do.

"But my belief in this is that while Zimbabwe remains as it is, it casts a shadow over that whole part of southern Africa and it is a tragedy for the people concerned."

Zimbabwe's relations with Britain have been strained over the past seven years, after Mugabe launched sweeping land reforms that saw government seizing properties from white commercial farmers, mostly of British descent.

Mugabe has accused Blair of harbouring plans to "recolonise" Zimbabwe - which, as Rhodesia, was a British colony until 1980 - by using the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as a front - AFP
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