Biti accused of spying for western countries

Finance Minister Tendai Biti has been accused of trying to use his position in Government to spy on the country's classified information on behalf of Zimbabwe's Western enemies and other multilateral institutions.

This follows reports of a request made by the International Monetary Fund officials through his ministry yesterday that they wanted to meet Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The IMF team has been in the country for the routine Article IV consultations that deal with economic developments and policies of member states.

After completing its mission yesterday, it is understood that the team requested to meet Minister Mnangagwa to have an explanation of claims by Minister Biti recently that the Zimbabwe National Army had illegally recruited 5 000 soldiers.

The IMF wanted to know whether the Finance Minister had not given nod to the recruitment of the soldiers.

Government sources said the request was made by the head of the team who was only identified as Mr Pedro.

According to Minister Biti, the "illegal" recruitment had strained Government coffers and the issue was also given much publicity in the private media.

Sources said the issue of recruitment of soldiers that was raised by Minister Biti two weeks ago was intended to give the IMF team pointers on areas to probe in his own Government.

"(Minister) Biti's game plan is now in the open. When he raised the issue of recruitment of soldiers, he was doing it on behalf of the IMF. He did the same before the Kimberly Process and Certification Scheme meeting held in Washington recently. That time he made a lot of noise claiming that Anjin was not remitting diamond money to treasury. After the KPCS meeting, Anjin was no longer an issue to him.

"By so doing, Minister Biti wanted to subject the Government to effective probing by outsiders and his intention to make the inclusive Government a listening post for the West has been working," said a source.

Another source said the request by the IMF team was absurd.

He said the multilateral institution was going out of its way and was trying to redefine the line of command in Zimbabwe.

"The IMF sought audience with the Minister of Defence and has not done so through the Commander in Chief but through a line ministry, which is its contact line in Government.

"By so doing, the IMF is trying to redefine the command or making itself the commander in chief in Zimbabwe. The IMF is also widening its mandate because its brief is to meet with economic ministries.

"Ordinarily, the IMF could not have such courage and it is clear that the request is emanating from within and the IMF is just playing cat's paw to certain political interests in the country," said the source.

Another Government official said the request by the IMF poses a threat to the country's security.

"This is a new dimension, which is unprecedented and it amounts to a security threat and shall be dealt with that way.

"In any case, the Ministry of Finance has no role in determining when the army should recruit. Where did (Minister) Biti acquire  security competence and besides he is not even a security official in his own party," said the source.

It was not clear yesterday whether Minister Mnangagwa would accede to the request as he was reported to be out of the country together with the Ministry's Permanent Secretary Mr Martin Rushwaya.

However, our Harare Bureau was reliably informed that the request was unlikely to be granted not only because defence was a security area but the request was absurd.
Minister Biti could not be reached for a comment yesterday.