Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has accused US President George W. Bush of "rank hypocrisy" for lecturing him on human rights.
Robert Mugabe addresses the General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, yesterday. Image: Reuters.
"His hands drip with innocent blood of many nationalities," Mr Mugabe said in a speech to the UN General Assembly yesterday. "He kills in Iraq. He kills in Afghanistan. And this is supposed to be our master on human rights?"
Mr Mugabe (83), in power since independence from Britain in 1980, was speaking the day after Mr Bush scolded the governments of Belarus, Syria, Iran and North Korea as "brutal regimes" in his speech to the General Assembly.
Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe attacks President Bush at the UN
Mr Bush criticised the Zimbabwe government as "tyrannical" and an "assault on its people."
"What rank hypocrisy," Mr Mugabe said of Mr Bush's speech. He said the United States imprisoned and tortured people in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo.
"At that concentration camp, international law does not apply," said Mr Mugabe.
He claimed Mr Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair, "rode roughshod" over the United Nations when they went to war in Iraq, yet now Mr Bush was asking the world body to expand its role in Iraq.
"Almighty Bush is now coming back to the UN for a rescue package because his nose is bloodied. Yet he dares to lecture us on tyranny," Mr Mugabe said.
Critics accuse Mr Mugabe of afflicting Zimbabwe's once-thriving economy with widespread food shortages and hyperinflation.
Zimbabwe's leader accuses Western countries of sabotaging the economy as punishment for his seizure of white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.