BRITAIN/ZIMBABWE:BRITAIN'S TROUBLED relations with Zimbabwe took a turn for the worse yesterday after Robert Mugabe's security forces detained for a time and harassed UK and US diplomats as they were monitoring violence against opposition activists. Zimbabwe's ambassador to Britain, Gabriel Machinga, was summoned to the foreign office in London to explain why the diplomats, who were travelling in two separate convoys, had been stopped at roadblocks north of the capital, Harare.
David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, condemned what he called a "serious incident" but said no violence had been directed at the UK personnel involved.
Britain's ambassador to Harare, Andrew Pocock, told the Guardian in London there had been "no particular argy-bargy". But the US ambassador, James McGee, said in a CNN interview that the convoy carrying American officials had been stopped by Zimbabwean "war veterans who threatened to burn our people alive in the car if they did not leave the vehicles".
In Washington, the state department called the detention and harassment of the US diplomats "absolutely outrageous" and indicative of the "repression and violence" Zimbabwe's government is willing to use against its own people.
The official explanation from Harare was that the diplomats had been attending a rally of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). "There was a fight there. Police were called in. The diplomats fled from the scene," Zimbabwe's deputy information minister, Bright Matonga, told Sky News. "On their way back to Harare, they were stopped at a police roadblock. They were asked to disembark . . . They refused, and basically the police told them they were not going anywhere unless they got out of the car. The police told them they should respect the laws of the country, unless they have something to hide."
Mr Matonga later said the diplomats were addressing the MDC rally. But Mr Pocock said: "We were in a place where there's been violence. They didn't want us to see it. This is a warning to us to keep our noses out of it."
The British ambassador said there had been two separate incidents involving two convoys, one with American diplomats and the other "British embassy defence staff" - which explains differences in the British and American accounts of what happened.
The Americans were held for up to five hours at Bindura, 80km (50 miles) from Harare. US embassy spokesman Paul Engelstad said the attackers beat a Zimbabwean US employee and slashed the tyres of some cars.
Zimbabwe's government said yesterday it had indefinitely suspended all work by aid groups and non-governmental organisations, accusing a number of breaching their terms of registration.