UK, US 'caused Zimbabwe droughts'

A state-run newspaper in Zimbabwe has suggested the UK and US are to blame for droughts in southern Africa. The Herald said climate change has been artificially induced "in a bid to arm-twist the region to capitulate to the whims of the world's superpowers". It said weather was being manipulated for political gain using unspecified "unconventional" chemical weapons.

It is widely seen as a mouthpiece for President Robert Mugabe's government, correspondents say. It said recent droughts, which defied predictions by the Zimbabwean government and the Southern African Development Community's Drought Monitoring Centre, pointed to the possibility of the weather being manipulated for political purposes.

"The overt and covert machinations by Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler Britain, which has declared its intentions to effect illegal regime change in Harare, have given credence to the conspiracy theory," the paper said. It said that the US Famine Early Warning System had predicted famine in Zimbabwe six months before it occurred.