U.S. editorial excerpts -3-

NEW YORK, April 18 Kyodo

Selected editorial excerpts from the U.S. press:

COMRADE BOB'S STAYING POWER (The Wall Street Journal, New York)

Robert Mugabe is putting on a clinic for African despots. A lost election, inflation at 200,000 percent and the contempt of his people can't budge the octogenarian.

The Mugabe regime wobbled, briefly, after the March 29 elections. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai humiliated the strongman by winning close to or above 50 percent of the vote in a three-man presidential race, according to tallies from individual polling stations. His Movement for Democratic Change also wrested control of Parliament from the ruling ZANU-PF party. Optimists in Harare speculated that Mr. Mugabe was about to resign.

That turned out to be wishful thinking. Instead, Mr. Mugabe regrouped. Official presidential results haven't been released, and the regime, which somehow let the parliamentary results slip out, is now reviewing votes in enough districts to make sure ZANU-PF gets back Parliament. The counting is unsupervised by independent observers.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mugabe let his goon squads loose. So-called war veterans, often led by military professionals, are out in force. ''There is growing evidence that rural communities are being punished for their support for opposition candidates,'' the U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, said yesterday. ''We have disturbing and confirmed reports of threats, beatings, abductions, burnings of homes and even murder, from many parts of the country.''

This blunt repression has stopped the opposition's postelection momentum. It also makes it harder to find a way out of the crisis. In such a violent environment, a second round in the presidential race is all but impossible. The regime appeared to rule out that prospect yesterday by accusing Mr. Tsvangirai of ''treason.'' The Justice Minister claimed that the opposition leader plotted with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to bring ''an illegal regime change in Zimbabwe.''

The old white colonial bogeyman is another Mugabe favorite. With four in five people out of work, millions faced with starvation and millions more forced to flee abroad, not many Zimbabweans will fall for it. Yet people are frightened and unwilling to stick their necks out if the country's establishment won't do so first. A general strike call this week went unheeded.

(April 18)

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