U.N. envoy urges end to razing

UNITED NATIONS – A senior U.N. envoy Friday urged Zimbabwe to halt the deliberate destruction of the country’s slums and give humanitarian aid workers access to more than 700,000 impoverished people who have been driven from their homes.

Anna Tibaijuka, a senior U.N. housing official who recently returned from Zimbabwe, accused the government’s military and police forces in a report of destroying thousands of slum dwellings and marketplaces as part of a nationwide campaign to beautify the country’s cities. She urged wealthy governments to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to Zimbabwe’s government and to private charities to help victims and rebuild destroyed homes and neighborhoods.

U.N. officials say they hope the prospect of fresh aid will nudge Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, into reopening talks with the country’s political opposition and ending a land-reform program that the report said has crippled the nation’s economy.

Mugabe’s government launched a massive police and military operation in May to rid Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, and other cities of the slums that it asserts have served as laboratories for crime, black-market trade and other forms of urban blight.