UNITED States President Barack Obama has extended sanctions against Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and his key supporters for another year.
In a pair of statements late Monday, Obama said the travel and financial restrictions on President Mugabe and his allies will extend at least through March 6 2011.
President George W. Bush imposed the sanctions in 2003, accusing President Mugabe of undermining Zimbabwe’s democratic institutions and causing instability in southern Africa.
Obama says the crisis has not been resolved, and that President Mugabe’s actions continue to pose a threat to US foreign policy interests.
President Mugabe has demanded an end to the sanctions and similar measures imposed by Britain and the European Union.
The sanctions were put in place a few years after President Mugabe’s government began seizing white-owned farmlands for transfer to landless blacks.
The Zimbabwean leader said he was correcting a colonial-era injustice. Critics say the move triggered a sharp drop in food production and the collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy.
Millions of Zimbabweans have fled the country in the past decade, mostly to South Africa.
Zimbabwe’s economy has stabilised since President Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and the long-time opposition Movement for Democratic Change formed a unity government last year.
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