UK turns down Zimbabwe

Britain said yesterday it would not fund Zimbabwe's controversial plan to forcibly buy land from white commercial farmers to resettle landless black peasants or commercial farmers. President Robert Mugabe has been demanding that Britain give his government money to buy back land from "its white children" so that it can resettle indigenous blacks.

"The British government stressed that the programme of rapid land acquisition that now seems to be envisaged in Zimbabwe would be impossible for Britain to support." the British High Commission said yesterday. - Reuters, Harare