The Zimbabwe President, Mr Robert Mugabe, said yesterday his government's programme to redistribute white-owned farms to blacks had been recognised around the world as just and reasonable. He described the programme as the "last struggle for the complete decolonisation of our country and continent".
In a tough opening address to parliament, Mr Mugabe promised to review high fuel prices that sparked a crippling national strike earlier this month. But he offered no other concession to reduce rising political tension ahead of next year's presidential elections.
Mr Mugabe said his seizure of white-owned farms for black resettlement was part of a struggle for national sovereignty following Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980.
"Today we face ever-mounting, insistent but legitimate expectations from our people for substantial deliverables of independence," he said.
Mr Mugabe (77) said parliament must give Zimbabwe a "truly sovereign status" through laws and policies by which citizens could defend and increase their legitimate rights.
"The one critical area presenting stiff but urgent political and legislative challenges is that of land reform," he said. "Our position on the land issue is now well understood by a majority of members of the international community, who now accept it as just and reasonable."
Mr Mugabe said the Organisation of African Unity - which was transformed into an African Union at a summit in Zambia two weeks ago - had expressed overwhelming support for his land reforms and his assertion that Britain had a colonial responsibility to fund the programme.
"There is unanimity that Britain has a definite colonial responsibility to discharge and that Zimbabwean land must come back to its people," he said.
"I am sure you are now aware that all the attempts to isolate Zimbabwe in various forums have come to grief as more and more African nations have rallied behind what in fact is our last struggle for the complete decolonisation of our country and continent," he added.
Mr Mugabe acknowledged in broad terms that the country was facing an economic crisis, but offered no new proposals outside his regular calls for dialogue among Zimbabwe's major players.
In his only concession, Mr Mugabe said the government would review a 70 per cent fuel price rise that led to a two-day strike in the first week of July. He gave no timescale.
Mr Mugabe made no reference to the political tension in the country, especially the violence against the opposition blamed largely on his ruling ZANU-PF party.
One of Zimbabwe's top hotels, the thatched 275-room Elephant Hills in the prime Victoria Falls resort, was ravaged by an apparently accidental fire yesterday but no-one was hurt, witnesses said.