Zimbabwe's War Veterans Threaten To Seize Power March 17, 2000 HARARE, Zimbabwe (PANA) - Zimbabwe's former independence fighters have threatened to launch a guerrilla war if President Robert Mugabe's governing party lost parliamentary elections in April. The former guerrillas said opposition parties in the country were on the pay-roll of big powers, led by the former colonial master, Britain, trying to dislodge the Zimbabwean leader from power for standing up for the interests of blacks, particularly farmland. "We will never allow people who oppressed us to come to power. It means we will go back to the bush. We will declare a military government," Andrew Ndlovu, a leader of the former guerrillas, said Thursday. "Should the party (Mugabe's) fail us, we would rather go into a military government for a period of five years to set things straight," he added. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party faces the biggest electoral challenge of its 20-year rule in the April polls, from the opposition capitalising on its poor economic management record. The former guerrillas have in recent weeks seized hundreds of white-owned farms to press demands for land reform, which the government accuses Britain and other big powers of stalling. Much of the country's best agricultural land is controlled by 4,500 white farmers, and the government wants to acquire it without adequate compensation to resettle landless blacks. Mugabe, brushing aside local and international criticism of the farm seizures, has encouraged his former fighters to stay put on the farms they had occupied. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2000 Panafrican News Agency. All Rights Reserved. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------