June 6, 2008 -- "IT was apparently without irony that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization invited to this week's Rome conference Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe - whose lasting achievement will be the starvation of his own people.
Zimbabwe's food crisis began in 2000, when Mugabe made the seizure of white-owned farms official state policy. Productive farmers were thrown off their land. Some were killed; many more fled.
Instead of redistributing the land to poor blacks - as he'd repeatedly promised - Mugabe gave the properties to his political cronies.
Unsurprisingly, most of Zimbabwe's once-productive farms today lie fallow - and a country that used to be Africa's breadbasket now relies upon international food aid to feed its hungry people.
But even that source of sustenance may soon disappear.
Word of the new crisis broke as Mugabe ranted in Rome about supposed British and American plans for "regime change" against him (if only!).
CARE, one of the largest international aid groups operating in Zimbabwe, reported that Mugabe's government had mandated that it stop distributing food to needy people in the Zimbabwean countryside. As a result, hundreds of thousands may starve in the coming weeks and months.
The United Nations can now add Zimbabwe's agony to the list of humanitarian crimes it has proven powerless to solve - alongside the genocide in Darfur, and, more recently, the junta-imposed blockade of international assistance in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in Burma
Mugabe's latest campaign of terror began when the opposition Movement for Democratic Change won the March 29 parliamentary and presidential elections - the first time in Zimbabwe's post-independence history that the ruling regime has lost.
Not that the government recognizes defeat; it has scheduled a runoff vote for June 27 that will likely be rigged. The actual winner, Morgan Tsvangirai, fled the country soon after his victory to avoid attempts on his life - and Mugabe's goons arrested him on Wednesday.
The regime has so thoroughly terrorized its people over the last two months that conditions for a free and fair election are utterly nonexistent. Mugabe has refused to seat opposition candidates who won seats in parliament. And the military's top general recently told the nation's soldiers that they should be prepared to vote for, and defend, Mugabe's rule at all costs.
Most of the violence is taking place in remote rural areas - where victims are less likely to report abuse. Yesterday, Zimbabwean police attacked US and British diplomats as they tried to investigate the rural political violence.
The regime is cracking down on food delivery, aid agencies report, so as to prevent foreigners from exposing its crimes. Keeping aid workers out also eases the regime's ability to manipulate food aid for its supporters' benefit.
All of which makes Mugabe's presence at the Rome summit utterly obscene.
In fact, the European Union has banned travel by Mugabe and his top officials since 2002 for the express purpose of isolating the regime. But the United Nations used its authority to get him in anyway - just as it does in bringing him to General Assembly meetings in New York. (It was on a 2003 UN trip that Mugabe was honored at City Hall by Councilman Charles Barron.)
UN apologists insist the world body has no choice but to deal with the head of a member nation. Yet Zimbabwe isn't a superpower like China; sanctioning it poses no threat to international security.
Moreover, Mugabe's continued occupation of the presidency is illegal: He lost the March election and is using the powers of the state to maintain his rule and crush the opposition.
Rather than dignify Mugabe with an audience, the United Nations should insist that he respect the expressed will of his people and step down immediately. Of course, the odds of the UN doing that are about the same as those of it wishing Israel a happy 60th birthday.
If there's one positive outcome to this week's charade, it's that, once again, Sen. John McCain's case for a League of Democracies is bolstered. Perhaps one day an international organization will exist that cares more about the fate of starving and oppressed people than preserving dictators."
Know what the strangest thing about Mugabe is?
He's one of the few world-renowned murderous thugs who isn't a close friend of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter.
As far as we know. The smart money says that at least one of the terrible trio has close connections to the fiend that starved Africa.
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