UN envoy jets into Zim.

Menkerios is expected to discuss the humanitarian situation with President Robert Mugabe, two weeks after the veteran leader suspended all work by relief agencies he accused of using aid distribution to campaign for opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai ahead a run-off presidential election later this month – a charge aid groups deny.Officials in Harare said they expected Menkerios to also meet Tsvangirai who they said would brief the UN envoy on the political violence that has killed at least 66 members of his opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party and displaced more than 25 000 others and who were in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. “He is expected to arrive Monday and he will go back on Friday,” said a government official, who did not want to be named. “If all goes well, he would meet with President Mugabe and probably Morgan Tsvangirai.” Zimbabwe’s foreign affairs minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi was not immediately available for comment on the matter. Menkerios’ planned visit to Harare follows a meeting between Mugabe and the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on the sidelines of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) summit in Rome about two weeks ago.However, a UN official, Michelle Montas, told the press last week that Menkerios was not coming to Harare as a special envoy but in his capacity as the person in charge of African issues in the Department of Political Affairs (to discuss the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe).The European Union and the United States have criticised the ban on aid groups that they say has cut off support to more than two million Zimbabweans who received life sustaining support from aid agencies on daily basis.Human rights groups say worsening political violence in the southern African country that has destroyed homes, property and livelihoods of victims made the move to stop humanitarian operations even more devastating for the thousands of children and women affected by hunger and displaced by political violence.British foreign secretary David Miliband on Sunday stepped up pressure on Mugabe likening the veteran leader’s rule to “sadism” and called on South Africa to do more to exert pressure on its northern neighbour to end political violence and repression. Zimbabwe, once a regional breadbasket, has grappled with severe food shortages since 2000 when Mugabe launched his haphazard fast-track land reform exercise that displaced established white commercial farmers and replaced them with either incompetent or inadequately funded black farmers.An economic recession marked by the world’s highest inflation rate of more than 165 000 percent has exacerbated the food crisis, with the government out of cash to import food, while many families that would normally be able to buy their own food supplies are unable to do so because of an increasingly worthless currency.Most households – especially the poor in rural areas – now depend on handouts from foreign governments and relief agencies to survive. – ZimOnline