Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai begins his first official trip to Europe and the U.S. this weekend, AP cited an aide as saying today. James Maridadi, the prime minister's spokesman, says Tsvangirai wants to re-engage during his three-week trip. Western leaders have long isolated Zimbabwe, accusing President Robert Mugabe of trampling on democracy and ruining a once-vibrant economy. Mugabe is still in power as part of the coalition Tsvangirai joined in February. The U.S. Embassy says Tsvangirai will travel to Washington, but gave no other details. Tsvangirai will be in the Netherlands on Sunday and Monday for meetings with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, as well as Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen and Overseas Development Aid Minister Bert Koenders, said Koenders' spokesman Francesco Mascini. Other European points were believed on his agenda, but Maridadi said he could not give Tsvangirai's stops for security reasons. Mugabe insists Western sanctions led to the nation's economic meltdown, charges repeatedly dismissed by the United States and Britain, the former colonial ruler. In a statement Wednesday, Britain said Western visa, travel and banking restrictions targeted only Mugabe and another 242 loyalists and organizations responsible for human rights abuses, political violence and the breakdown of the rule of law in the past decade. «The economic collapse of Zimbabwe and its infrastructure is the result of the ruinous policies of the previous regime» led by Mugabe, the statement said. Both Tsvangirai and his finance minister Tendai Biti have called on Western countries to lift what they called «restrictive measures» against Zimbabwe now that a coalition government was making progress toward economic and democratic reform. Western donors and financial institutions, however, say reforms have not gone far enough as disputes over key government posts and violent seizures of white-owned farms continue to plague the coalition.
