JOHN HUMPHRYS:                    Tomorrow European foreign 
ministers are meeting and they will talk about the growing crisis in Zimbabwe 
that's threatening the stability of the whole part of Africa there.  The 
country was once a British colony and there are still tens of thousands 
of British passport holders living there who are increasingly at risk from 
supporters of President Mugabe. Earlier this week Robin Cook met Mugabe 
and thought he'd managed to pour some oil on troubled waters but it didn't 
last long. Mugabe was making more threats even before he'd returned home. 
So what's to be done now? The Foreign Office Minister responsible for Africa 
is Peter Hain and I'll be talking to him, but first the view from the Conservative 
Party. I asked the Shadow Foreign Secretary Francis Maude why - since Zimbabwe 
has been an independent country for twenty years - we should get involved 
at all. 

FRANCIS MAUDE:                No, it certainly isn't our 
fault but we are right to be concerned about it. There are fifty thousand 
people in Zimbabwe who have British passports, or who are entitled to British 
passports, so we have a direct interest in it anyway. But also it's a member 
of the Commonwealth and you know we ought not to stand by when something 
is going badly wrong as it is. You know I've had people coming in to see 
me from Zimbabwe, the Editor of the Zimbabwe Standard for example, who 
was locked up and tortured last year by the Mugabe thugs. The Opposition 
has been systematically intimidated and there is now a process going on 
there which looks pretty much like ethnic cleansing.

HUMPHRYS:                    But we have condemned 
very strongly all those things that you talk about. We have offered a sort 
of land deal to help the white farmers with strings attached, there's not 
much more we can do is there?

MAUDE:                    Well actually there's precious 
little that we have done by way of condemning it. Robin Cook last week 
at the Cairo Summit where he met with Mugabe, actually really sat on his 
hands, he spent so much time grubbing around promising to Mr Mugabe that 
he wouldn't say unpleasant things about him that a very mixed message came 
over. We should be very unequivocal with Zimbabwe. This sort of behaviour 
is incompatible with the remaining part of the Commonwealth. You know the 
Commonwealth if it stands for anything it stands for the rule of law, for 
democracy and for open economies, which are the things that countries can 
now choose to do if they want to be successful. Zimbabwe is potentially 
a hugely successful country, very fertile, blessed with enormous natural 
resources and actually it's being squandered and it's the people who are 
suffering, black and white alike who are suffering under the yoke of a 
very bad regime.  We can stand up and speak up for what's right and we 
can take some steps which actually put pressure on the regime to reform 
its ways. 

HUMPHRYS:                    Such as? - should we 
throw them out of the Commonwealth immediately? 

MAUDE:                    Well I think we should suspend 
them from the Commonwealth yes, as I say if it stands for any values its 
the values which are being trashed by Mr Mugabe.  So yes that should happen. 
We should suspend the military training that's still going in, we should 
suspend the government to government aid because all of the indications 
are that that aid simply gets stolen by the regime and is used to enrich 
Mr Mugabe and his cronies so that should be stopped. Aid which goes directly 
through NGOs and so on to people and to communities, that should continue 
and aid for the National AIDS programme there, that could continue as well. 
 But direct government to government aid should now stop. So yes, there 
are some real things that could be done. 

HUMPHRYS:                    And you would include 
the selling of Hawk parts, you'd stop that as well would you? - parts of 
Hawk aircraft. 

MAUDE:                    Yes, I mean that should 
stop because, you know what's happening at the moment is that Mr Mugabe 
is running a war in the Congo which is a purely sort of diversionary activity, 
is giving no benefit at all to the people of Zimbabwe, it's costing them 
a lot of money, a lot of money which would otherwise could be used to better 
their condition, is being wasted on that. So that should be stopped as 
well.  And the other thing that we could do, is to think about freezing 
the overseas assets of Mr Mugabe and his cronies. All the evidence is that 
they have been stealing from the government and from the people of Zimbabwe, 
treating it really as their own fiefdom and that won't do and there are 
steps that can be taken to deal with that, so all of these are things that 
could actually be done. As far as I can see Robin Cook is planning to do 
none of them.

HUMPHRYS:                    European Union ministers, 
foreign ministers are meeting tomorrow, they are going to be talking about 
their aid, Europe's aid to Zimbabwe, should that be stopped as well?

MAUDE:                    I think one of the problems 
with the European Union being so much involved with this is that it compounds 
the impression which is actually very harmful in Zimbabwe, that this is 
a sort of western, a patronising, you know ex-post colonial approach. It 
shouldn't be dealt with in that way. The European Union is the wrong body 
to be dealing with this. The right body is the Commonwealth because that's 
in the family. The Commonwealth is a world wide organisation, it has a 
lot of experience in dealing with this sort of situation, it does stand 
up for the values which need to be reasserted in Zimbabwe. There's an opposition, 
a vigorous opposition and a vigorously free press, despite Mugabe's intimidation 
in Zimbabwe which is crying out for that kind of support. So we should 
be looking for Commonwealth observers to be there during the parliamentary 
elections later this year, assuming Mugabe doesn't seize the opportunity 
to postpone them, to put them off and Commonwealth action in terms of threatening 
suspension unless he mends his ways. 

HUMPHRYS:                    So you want to get very 
tough, but it sounded from what your leader Mr Hague was saying in Harrogate 
last week that he wanted a better dialogue.   He didn't seem to think that 
Mr Cook should have been quite so nasty to Mr Mugabe.

MAUDE:                    No, it was not what he was 
saying at all.  You see what has gone here is that the Government have 
refused to have the sort of frank relationship with Mr Mugabe that comes 
from mutual trust and respect.  They just haven't done that  They've sort 
of crawled around after Mr Mugabe with a patronising attitude, and actually 
what one needs to hear is a respect...a relationship of trust and respect 
where you can actually say what you think.  There's nothing more humiliating 
I think for Britain than the sight of Mr Cook on Monday grubbing around 
Mr Mugabe sucking up to him, promising that he wouldn't say anything unpleasant 
about him.  What is needed is the relationship which actually is based 
on the ability to talk frankly about what's going on.

HUMPHRYS:                    The trouble....

MAUDE:                    ...Mr Mugabe's letting his 
country down, he's letting the Commonwealth down.

HUMPHRYS:                    Yes, but the trouble 
with that is Mugabe's a pretty unpredictable sort of bloke, and he can 
be a very tough guy as we've seen, and pretty brutal as well.  Now if you 
have the Foreign Secretary here rubbing him up the wrong way, saying things 
that get him very upset indeed, who knows what effect that will have, an 
even worse effect than is already being had on British people amongst others 
who are in Zimbabwe.  Now, we would then have to deal with the fallout 
from that would we not?

MAUDE:                    Well, you see you just look 
at what's happened this week.  On Monday Mr Cook was crawling around Mr 
Mugabe, you know, agreeing with everything he proposed, saying that he 
would keep Peter Hain who seems particularly offensive to Mr Mugabe, keeping 
him out of the room during the meeting, promising he wouldn't say anything 
unpleasant about him, and then two days later what happens - as soon as 
Mr Mugabe gets back to Zimbabwe he gets parliament to put through an act 
which will nationalise and seize from farmers a lot of land without compensation 
which will put a lot of black farm-workers out of their jobs, it'll ruin 
their livelihoods.  Now, you know, so did Mr Cook greasing up to Mugabe 
have any benefit at all?  No, it had exactly the reverse effect.  It is 
actually being firm, polite but firm that pays dividends here, and using 
all of the influence that the Commonwealth can bring to bear which is considerable.

HUMPHRYS:                    But if it comes down 
to it you'd live with the consequences, be happy to live with the consequences 
of many thousands, perhaps as many as eighty thousand - there are eighty 
thousand whites there alone, some of whom have British passports, many 
of whom don't - you'd be happy to have all of those coming here to as it 
where seek refuge from Mugabe?

MAUDE:                    Well, you know the right 
thing to do is for the regime to stop trying to intimidate people out of 
the country, to run things in such a way that it can be stable.   You know 
what countries need is the rule of law, open economies and democracy.  
If you have that they will succeed,  it's voluntary.  What's happening 
to Zimbabwe at the moment is a choice being made by Mr Mugabe, and it's 
inflicting harm on it If he just does better things which is what the majority 
of the public seem to want and if there are free elections,  properly free 
elections in May, then I think that's what will be shown in those elections, 
if all of that happens then there would be no need - there's certainly 
no desire for these people to flood out of Zimbabwe, they want to stay 
there, that's where their home is, their life is.  They want to make a 
success of it.

HUMPHRYS:                    Francis Maude, thank 
you very much.

MAUDE:                    Thank you.