President Mugabe vowed yesterday that he would let no one block the redistribution of Zimbabwe's farmland, despite court injunctions urging the police to intervene on the side of the farmers.

"It's a process which we would want to see unfold in the interests of the people and we, as a government, certainly will not allow any resistance to it," Mr Mugabe told CNN in an interview from Havana, where he attended an economic summit.

In a speech to leaders of the Group of 77 summit in Cuba on Thursday, Mr Mugabe castigated Britain and reaffirmed he would take land without compensation. "I want to assure you that the land will be acquired, sanctions or no sanctions. Let Zimbabweans own Zimbabwean land as Britons own British land," said the 76-year-old president.

Chenjerai Hunzvi, the leader of the 1970s liberation war veterans who have occupied at least 500 mainly white-owned farms in the past two months, said there would be no letup.

"They (whites) have resisted this peaceful process for 20 years and the resistance has come to a point that the masses and the war veterans are saying we cannot bear with the devil," he said. "This is quite a war. It is a war to liberate land . . . They have been fighting us. They continue to fight us."

In London meanwhile, a leading Zimbabwean opposition figure criticised British Foreign Office ministers for being too harsh on Mr Mugabe and warned they risked making a martyr out of him.

Mr Morgan Tsvangirai said British ministers had agreed to tone down their language after weeks of angry attacks on Mr Mugabe, who is accused of backing the land grab to boost his electoral standing.