Harare - Johnnie Carson, the United States' most senior
official focused on Africa, has been labelled 'an idiot' by
Zimbabwean President Mugabe, following an angry exchange between the
two in Libya last week, state media reported Monday.
US assistant secretary of state for African affairs Carson met
Mugabe on the sidelines of the annual African Union summit in Sirte
on Thursday last week. Diplomats in Harare reported that Mugabe
stormed out of the meeting.
The state-controlled daily Herald quoted Mugabe as saying that he
was angered by Carson's 'condescending attitude', but the 85-year-old
leader did not specify what remark had caused offence.
Carson was 'a little fellow' who 'thinks he could dictate to us
what to do and what not to do,' Mugabe was quoted as saying.
'I hope he wasn't speaking for (President Barack) Obama,' Mugabe
went on. 'You wouldn't speak to an idiot (referring to Carson) of
that nature. I was very angry with him,' he added.
He said he had told Carson that he was 'a great shame, being an
African-American.'
The remarks are the latest in a string of insults Mugabe has
hurled at his critics. Last week he said Irene Khan, the Amnesty
International secretary-general who visited Zimbabwe late last month,
was 'bewitched.'
He also called Jendayi Frazer, Carson's predecessor during George
Bush's presidency, 'that little American girl trotting around the
globe like a prostitute.'
And Western critics of the government's crackdown on the
opposition were told in no uncertain terms, in 2007, to 'go hang.'
His lack of rapport with Carson contrasts with the apparently warm
relationship struck up last month between Obama and Prime Minister
Morgan Tsvangirai - Mugabe's longtime rival, with whom he formed a
coalition government in February.
Obama described Tsvangirai as 'a hero of democracy' during
Tsvangirai's visit to Washington last month.
The US embassy refrained from commenting on the encounter between
Mugabe and Carson.
One Western diplomat said he assumed Carson had been impressing on
Mugabe the need for progress in the area of human rights and the rule
of law.
The US and other Western donors are holding back on funding the
cash-strapped Zimbabwean government until seeing significant reform
in these areas.
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