Mugabe: Obama's top expert on Africa is "an idiot"

Jul 6, 2009, 10:53 GMT

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.