Howard pulls plug on Zimbabwe tour

[King]

Howard pulls plug on Zimbabwe tour Prime Minister John Howard says the Government has written to Cricket Australia (CA) to tell it to cancel the controversial upcoming tour of Zimbabwe. Speaking on ABC TV's Insiders program this morning, Mr Howard said the decision had been taken after legal advice that the Government had the authority to stop the tour. He said the tour would have given an "enormous propaganda boost" to the regime of "grubby dictator" Robert Mugabe. "The government through the Foreign Minister has written to Cricket Australia instructing that the tour not go ahead," he said. "Whilst it pains me both as a cricket lover and someone who generally believes these things should be left to sporting organisations ... I don't think we have any alternative." Mr Howard said he spoke to the Players Association and also had a brief discussion with captain Ricky Ponting after the Australian team got back from its victorious World Cup campaign last month. "It's pretty obvious to me that the players and the body (CA) wanted to act in conformity with public opinion but in the end, not surprisingly, they wanted a situation where the decision was taken by the government and not the players," he said. "I don't think it's fair to leave a foreign policy decision of this magnitude on the shoulders of young sportsmen. "It's much better, in the end, for the government to take the rap. I hope the rest of the cricketing world understands that, and it would be a very good idea if the rest of the cricket world adopted the same attitude towards Mugabe's regime. "I'm not going to stand around and allow some kind of aid and comfort be given to him by the greatest cricketing team in the world visiting his country." And he warned the Government was willing to enforce the ban by refusing to issue visas to the team. "In the end we can prevent people taking part in such a tour," Howard said. "We would rather that not be the case but we are making it very plain to Cricket Australia and I think they will understand the import." Mr Howard also repeated his early assertion that Zimbabwe's security forces acted like the Nazi Gestapo and said the country's inflation problems reminded him of Germany's pre-Nazi Weimar Republic. "The Mugabe regime at present is behaving like the Gestapo towards its political opponents, the living standards of the country are probably the lowest of any in the world and you have an unbelievable rate of inflation." The three one-day internationals were scheduled for September.

[King]

Re: Howard pulls plug on Zimbabwe tour I was talking to couple of Saffie and Zimbok expats (both whites) and they feel there is fair bit of media interest and lobbying as Zimbabwe is a commonwealth country. In fact the Saffie was saying South Africa isn't any better run than Zimbabwe. It seems there other countries in Africa that are in much worse situation but neither the UK nor the Aussies worry about them simply because they are neither commonwealth and mostly consist of indigenous people. I was surprised to hear from the Saffie, Zimbabwe is not as bad a place it is made out to be by the media.

[The Outsider]

Re: Howard pulls plug on Zimbabwe tour Good job by Australia for a change. Hopefully other countries will follow suit.