UN aid chief to meet Mugabe over Harare 'clearances'

THE United Nations' emergency relief co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, was due to hold talks today with Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, on the country's worsening humanitarian crisis.

Mr Egeland will first tour a housing site in the south of the capital, Harare, and what is left of Hatcliffe Extension, where hundreds lost their homes during "Operation Drive Out Trash".

Police started bulldozing shacks and market stalls in May, leaving at least 700,000 people homeless, according to the UN. Mr Mugabe said it was a much-needed "urban renewal" campaign; the opposition Movement for Democratic Change said it was a bid to drive its supporters into the countryside.

Mr Egeland's trip comes days after the UN was criticised for its "softly-softly" approach towards Harare.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said local UN agencies had been reluctant to confront the government over its "blatant disregard of the human rights of the displaced".

The authorities in Zimbabwe claim they are in the throes of a massive construction programme that will see 250,000 houses built each year until 2008.

However, the total number of houses built in the capital so far is "in the hundreds", not the thousands, according to the Combined Harare Residents Association.

In the central town of Chinhoyi, at least 20 new houses were so shoddily built that they were washed away by the first rains.

Recently, the government quietly accepted the UN's offer of temporary housing for the displaced. Last week, it also agreed to let the World Food Programme distribute food aid directly to three million Zimbabweans.