Zimbabwe farmers face new deadline

Mugabe issued a new warning fo farmers after returning from the Earth Summit

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe's white farmers were facing a new deadline on Sunday to quit their properties and make way for landless blacks under President Robert Mugabe's land reforms.

Jenni Williams, spokeswoman for farm lobby group Justice for Agriculture (JAG) said the latest order for white farmers to leave their land by 2 p.m. (1200 GMT) on Sunday appeared to be unofficial and urged farmers to defy it.

"This is not an official deadline. It's a deadline that District Administrators and police have seemed to talk about, but we've had no government ministers actually say this is a specific deadline," Williams told Reuters.

District administrators and police had been visiting white commercial farms -- mainly in the Mashonaland West province -- warning them that if they were not off their land by 1200 GMT on Sunday they would be arrested, she said.

Most of those had received court orders nullifying eviction orders on grounds they were not served in accordance with the government's land confiscation laws, JAG official John Worswick told The Associated Press.

He described the new deadline as "an insult to the country's judicial system and a blatant disregard of the Constitution."

Police and government officials were not immediately available for comment.

Mugabe has ordered 2,900 commercial farmers to quit their land without compensation under a controversial programme to seize white-owned farms and hand them to landless blacks.

JAG says some 2,500 farmers have defied the eviction orders.

Police have charged more than 300 farmers with defying the initial August 8 government deadline.

"They are within their constitutional and legal rights, they must stay. This is just another way that they are trying to enforce the other deadlines that have come and gone," Williams added.

A JAG statement said: "We call on farmers who have the legal right to remain on their land to stand firm against this latest threat to commercial agriculture, and we call upon the regional and international community to recognise the plight of farmers and farm workers."

On Wednesday, Mugabe told white farmers to cooperate over the reforms, leave the country or face jail.

"Those who do not cooperate do not deserve to be in Zimbabwe and we shall take steps to ensure that they are not entitled to our land," Mugabe told supporters who turned out to welcome him home from the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

Mugabe flies to Libya

On Saturday Mugabe and three senior government ministers left for Libya, which has provided most of Zimbabwe's fuel for the past three years, state radio reported. (Full story)

Zimbabwe has been in crisis since pro-government militants led by veterans of the 1970s liberation war began invading white-owned farms in early 2000. Mugabe's disputed re-election earlier this year and clampdown on the media have brought EU sanctions against the president and his elite.

About 50,000 whites, including about 4,000 farmers, still live in Zimbabwe, a nation of 12.5 million people.

"Time is not on their side," Mugabe declared Wednesday and said the government would take action against farmers refusing to comply with evictions.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, says his land drive is aimed at correcting colonial injustice, which left 70 percent of the country's best land in the hands of white farmers.

Aid agencies say nearly half the country's people need food aid this year, a result of a wider food crisis in six drought-stricken southern African countries which they say has been exacerbated by Mugabe's land reforms.

Mugabe's government says the drought alone is to blame for the food shortages.

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