US firm strikes secret tobacco-for-maize dealA US financial firm has emerged as central to a secret multi-million dollar plan by Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to bail the country out of a food shortage and prepare the way for his election victory later this year.
Last week Mugabe forced the UN's World Food Programme crop assessment team to leave the country fearing that it would expose the dire harvest. Such a disaster would fly in the face of Mugabe's claims of a bumper harvest and prove that his controversial land reforms have failed. There has been a huge drop in production caused by land seizures from white farmers with much of the land lying fallow.
Sources claim that Mugabe has struck the secret deal with a group of US firms to provide thousands of tonnes of grain in exchange for tobacco and minerals.
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