Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is "a mad dictator" who has lost all sense of reality, a United Nations human rights expert said today.
The only way Mr Mugabe can be removed from power is for Europe to convince his "great protector South Africa" to withdraw all support for him, Jean Ziegler, an adviser to the UN's Human Rights Council, told Swiss Radio.
Mr Mugabe, Mr Ziegler declared, "is a former hero of the liberation struggle who has lost all sense of reality.... and become a mad dictator." He added: "The horror in Zimbabwe today is absolutely intolerable."
The comments from the Swiss sociologist, who has little sympathy for the Western countries most critical of Mr Mugabe, reflected the despair over Zimbabwe on the rights council.
Four other UN rights experts said Zimbabwe could not control a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 1,100 people.
The four - who report to the Human Rights Council on food, health, drinking water and the situation of rights defenders - said Mr Mugabe's "violations of civil and political rights" made it difficult to get a united response to the crisis.
Britain's Africa minister Mark Malloch Brown also said today Mr Mugabe will have to step down if any power-sharing government deal is to succeed, in an echo of comments from Washington.
Mr Mugabe and Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai agreed on September 15th to form a power-sharing government, but the deal has become deadlocked as the parties fight over control of key ministries.
"Power-sharing isn't dead but Mr Mugabe has become an absolute impossible obstacle to achieving it," Mr Malloch Brown told BBC radio. "He is so distrusted by all sides."
Referring to a call yesterday by US assistant secretary of state Jendayi Frazer for Mr Mugabe to step down to clear a path for the deal to go ahead, Mr Malloch Brown added: "The Americans are absolutely right - he is going to have to step aside."
The deadlock between Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai has held up any chance of ending the spiralling crisis in the southern African country, where a spreading cholera epidemic has killed more than 1,100 people and food and fuel are in short supply.
Mr Malloch Brown described the situation in Zimbabwe as being in the "final death throes" and said such scenarios often seemed "terribly slow and grim and unnecessary".
He said he doubted Mr Mugabe would go willingly, and added that offering him immunity from prosecution could be difficult.
The Zimbabwean government has accused former colonial power Britain and the United States of trying to exploit the cholera epidemic to end Mr Mugabe's 28-year rule - a suggestion dismissed by both London and Washington.
Reuters