Zimbabwean president addresses Zanu-PF conference скачать в хорошем качестве

Zimbabwean president addresses Zanu-PF conference

(20 Dec 2008) SHOTLIST 1. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe arriving ++JUMPCUT++ 2. Mugabe chanting party slogans at podium 3. Mid of audience chanting slogans 4. SOUNDBITE (English) Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean President : "ZANU-PF is the only party that is people orientated, and therefore, all the people must support ZANU-PF." 5. Back shot of member of the audience wearing shirt with picture of Mugabe 6. SOUNDBITE (English) Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean President : "Please, we are not in a rumours situation, where you are asking how can the bank act to be a mandate, can they do this using, you know, the norms that apply in normal situations. This is not a normal situation, it's a situation of emergency and we must use emergency measures." 7. Mid of audience listening STORYLINE Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe addressed a party conference on Saturday, in which he hinted at early elections. Speaking at the close of a two-day conference of his ZANU-PF party, Mugabe said his party should be preparing to avoid a repeat of his loss in March. Mugabe told around five-thousand party loyalists at the conference in Harare that new elections would be held if a power-sharing plan collapsed. The unity government agreement Mugabe signed in September with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has stalled in a dispute over which party should control key Cabinet posts. And recent violence has left many wondering whether the plan is workable. The political impasse has left Zimbabweans virtually leaderless as they suffer economic and humanitarian crises. Independent human rights groups have accused Mugabe's regime of stepping up attacks on dissidents in recent weeks. Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said on Friday that he would ask his party to halt power-sharing negotiations unless political detainees were released or charged by January 1. The MDC also has proposed new elections as the only way to resolve the standoff, but only under international supervision, a condition Mugabe is unlikely to accept. 84-year-old Mugabe, who has ruled the country since independence from Britain in 1980, lost the March presidential elections to Tsvangirai. Official results said Tsvangirai did not win enough presidential votes to avoid a runoff. Tsvangirai withdrew from the runoff, held in June and widely denounced as neither free nor fair, because of state-sponsored violence against his supporters. In his speech on Saturday, Mugabe said he had no intention of stepping down, and urged Zimbabweans to give their support to his party. Critics blame Zimbabwe's collapse on Mugabe's policies, including an often violent land reform campaign dating from 2000 that saw farms go to his cronies instead of the poor blacks he has championed. Mugabe blames Western sanctions for the country's economic meltdown, though the European Union and US sanctions have targeted only Mugabe and dozens of his top aides with frozen bank accounts and travel bans. Mugabe's has faced renewed criticism because of the humanitarian crisis that has pushed thousands of Zimbabweans to the point of starvation and left more than one-thousand dead from a cholera epidemic since August. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...