Fury over Zimbabwe's UN role

I've spoken often of my dismay at the failure of African nations to take a more robust stance against the dictatorial actions of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. It often appears to me as if they simply roll over and play dead every time the old dictator makes a demand.

However, their obsequience to Mugabe has now reached a new nadir with African nations voting at the UN to put Zimbabwe in charge of a key United Nations committee on the environment, despite the country's political repression and economic chaos.

This has, understandably, caused outrage amongst Europeans who are left wondering just why the African nations seem to be so in awe of this tyrant. Do they have no compassion for the people of Zimbabwe? Do they simply not care about their fate?

"Zimbabwe's election will be seen as an outrage by millions of people who look to the United Nations for help to escape from poverty," said Ian Pearson, Britain's minister for climate change and the environment. "They will be asking how the body charged with promoting sustainable development will be able to maintain credibility while being chaired by a representative of a government whose failed policies have destroyed its own economy." Inflation in Zimbabwe is running at 2,000 per cent as corruption, farm seizures and political violence disrupt the economy.

Daniel Reifsnyder, the US deputy assistant secretary for environment, said: "We really think it calls into question the credibility of this organisation to have a representative from a country that has decimated its agriculture, that used to be the breadbasket of Africa and can't now feed itself."

I am not an expert in African politics and find myself simply dumbstruck by this decision. Nor can the African nations pretend that this outcome is one that has in any way surprised them as the complaints emanating from the UN are that the past fortnight has descended into "a sequence of scripted speeches without setting targets for renewable energy and other environmental policies." So this was always the result that they were aiming for.

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps this is Africa's form of protest against the travel restrictions that have been imposed on Zimbabwe's officials. However, if this is the case, then I rather suspect they are being outraged by the wrong thing.

They should surely be more outraged at the attack on democracy Mugabe is carrying out in that country and reserving their condemnation for the policies that have left millions of Zimbabweans facing possible starvation.

There are very few times when I am genuinely dumbstruck, but I easily confess that this is one of those occasions.

The fact that the African nations seem Hellbent on protecting Mugabe strikes me as an abdication of their responsibility towards the citizens of one of their neighbouring countries.

And it is simply absurd to put anyone from Zimbabwe in charge of any forum on sustainable development, when the country is enduring the world's highest inflation and is unable to feed it's own people.

A US state department spokesman, Tom Casey, has said: "We don't think that Zimbabwe would be a particularly effective leader of this body."

He said development there had "been going in only one direction - and it's backwards".

I'm sure there is some skewered logic behind this decision, but it's not one that is immediately apparent.

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