China blocks UN briefing on Zimbabwe

China is objecting to a US and British demand for a Security Council briefing on a United Nations report condemning Zimbabwe’s slum clearance.

Greece’s UN Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis, the current council president, said talks were continuing to see if the report’s author, Anna Tibaijuka, could meet the council before she returned to Africa tomorrow.

Britain’s UN Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said he had asked for a public meeting on the Zimbabwe report if there was no agreement on having Tibaijuka brief the council at a closed session.

Several council diplomats, speaking anonymously because last night’s council discussion was closed, said China, with some backing from Algeria and Russia, objected to a briefing from Tibaijuka. China has close ties to the Zimbabwean government.

The highly critical report, issued last week, said the destruction of shanty towns and markets had left an estimated 700,000 people without their homes and livelihoods or both, and affected a further 2.4 million people. It said Operation Murambatsvina – Drive Out Trash – had “unleashed chaos and untold human suffering” in a country already gripped by economic crisis.

Acting US Ambassador Anne Patterson told reporters the US was concerned at reports it has just received that people who co-operated with Tibaijuka in writing her report “are now subject to retaliation”.

“These people are the poorest of the poor. They’ve been displaced. They’re left out in the cold. Kids can’t go to school. It’s verging on a crisis situation, and the council should at least get more information and take action on it,” she said.

“The situation is so unstable that it threatens neighbouring countries,” Patterson added.

UN secretary general Kofi Annan said on Monday he wanted to go to Zimbabwe to see first hand the effects of the government-led clearance.

But UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said yesterday “it’s not imminent”.

“This is obviously something that would have to happen further down the road, and we would have to have a number of improvements on the situation on the ground before he would go,” he said.

“One of them is that the evictions must cease and humanitarian aid must be provided to the people in need.”

Dujarric said there also would need to be “the start of a political process, a political dialogue between the government and other stakeholders in Zimbabwe,” as Tibaijuka called for in the report.