Archbishop responds to Prime Minister on Zimbabwe

Speaking from a staff retreat in Whitby Dr Sentamu said: "I am glad that in his interview with ITN the Prime Minister is talking about tougher sanctions upon Zimbabwe. "I would urge all Christian peoples to join me in continuing to pray for the people of Zimbabwe and for an end to their suffering. "The requests from the South African government and other African leaders for more time to deal with Mugabe is all very well, but time is not on the side the suffering, starving and dying in Zimbabwe. For every day that Mugabe remains in power, the scar on the conscience of our foreign policy grows bigger. "Like Uganda before it under Amin, Zimbabwe needs to be treated as the pariah state and to be stripped of the privileges afforded to it by diplomatic status. "I believe that the first step to tougher sanctions is to downgrade the status of Zimbabwean embassies across the EU to sectional interests at another embassy thereby maintaining contacts with Zimbabwe but ensuring that the Zimbabwean regime can no longer use its embassies as a conduit for propping up its corrupt regime. "I believe the UK Government should do the same with its diplomats from Zimbabwe, leaving a sectional interest as part of another embassy, such as South Africa, in order to maintain a presence for those UK citizens who remain. "The Prime Minister has stated that he will increase humanitarian aid, which is important and needed if it reaches the starving. But if this aid is to be looted and confiscated by Mugabe's gangsters as reports this week have highlighted, then in and of itself it will do little to help the suffering of the people. "Zimbabwe will only be free when it is rid of the despotic dictator and his regime who starves and browbeats his enemies into submission. It is heartbreaking that an African leader who saw the pain and poverty of the townships in South Africa would visit upon his own people the same misery due to their political opposition to his regime. "I remain hopeful that the Prime Minister may take an international lead, and that his statement today marks the beginning of a new policy effort towards Zimbabwe rather than a re-entrenchment of the policy that has so palpably failed to deliver change over the past five years."