Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe will not give up his controversial campaign of land reforms because of concern it is hurting South Africa, he said in an interview yesterday.
In Britain, the right-wing Sunday Telegraph claimed it had seen a "secret document" in which Mr Mugabe's ZANU-PF party set out plans to remove all white farmers from their land.
A series of land seizures, which have been condemned by a western coalition led by former colonial power Britain, have led to political violence and plunged the southern African country into its worst economic crisis since independence.
The violence has left dozens of blacks and at least seven white farmers dead.
It has also started to affect the South African economy and threatens to destabilise it politically.
In an interview given earlier this month with the Nigerian newspaper The Guardian, but published yesterday, Mr Mugabe said the white minority in South Africa was fearful of his campaign.
"In South Africa . . . the whites there are afraid of what might happen here, if we succeed in empowering our people.
"If we succeed here they fear that the same might happen in South Africa," he said.
South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki was believed to have led a behind-the-scenes campaign to persuade his Zimbabwean counterpart to end the violence, but Mr Mugabe has rejected these attempts.
"We are not going to stand by merely because what we do here affects South Africa. We have our own interests, the interests of our people to serve," Mr Mugabe said.
"Potentially a conflict situation exists in South Africa. We didn't cry when apartheid affected us here in a big way.
"We said 'fight justly'," he added.
The Sunday Telegraph report said a secret order from Mr Mugabe's ZANU-PF party to self-styled war veterans outlined the political goals of the campaign being waged against white farmers.
Entitled "Operation Give up and Leave", it reads: "The operation should be thoroughly planned so that farmers are systematically harassed and mentally tortured and their farms destabilised until they give in and give up," the Sunday Telegraph reported.
It said the document was circulated in July, just before a recent round of invasions in which many farmers were evicted and farms brought to a standstill by the forced removal of their workers.
Farmers who resist, the document says, should face the "Pamire-silencing method", a reference to Mr Chris Pamire, a businessman and former ZANU-PF supporter who fell out with Mr Mugabe and was killed in a mysterious road accident, according to the Sunday Telegraph.
Referring to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, the document says: "The opposition should be systematically infiltrated with highly-paid people to destabilise and cause divisions and infighting."
War veterans were promised "big rewards if the opposition and white farmers are brought to their knees", it was reported in the newspaper.
Concerns have been growing that violence will intensify as Mr Mugabe, angered by the continued presence of the whites, steps up his election campaign.
Mr Richard Caborn, Britain's Minister for Sport, was urging the England and Wales Cricket Board to reconsider its October tour of Zimbabwe after the BBC was banned from covering the event, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
In an interview with the paper, Mr Caborn said Britain viewed the BBC ban "very seriously".
Zimbabwe is unhappy at the BBC's coverage of the violence against white farmers and has expelled its correspondents.