HARARE (Dec. 4) XINHUA - The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) needs to mobilize the working class and the unemployed youths to ensure a landslide victory in the presidential elections scheduled for 2002, an official was quoted as saying by a local newspaper on Monday.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Herald on Sunday, ZANU-PF Secretary for Information and Publicity Nathan Shamuyarira said it is unfortunate that a lot of workers have been fooled to think that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has their interests at heart. Actually, it has nothing to offer to the workers because employers and the Commercial Farmers' Union are controlling it.

He stressed that the ruling party needs to win back the support of most working people in the towns who voted for the MDC during the parliamentary elections in June this year.

"As we head towards the presidential elections, we take cognizance of the fact that we have been through a momentous year, first the referendum, the elections and the land issue. We need to gear ourselves to advance our position and defend our interests, " Shamuyarira said.

The ZANU-PF also needs to usher in new blood in most structures of the party to bring in new ideas capable of shaping the country positively, he added.

HARARE (Dec. 4) XINHUA - Zimbabwean war veterans have warned that they will give the country's judges 14 days to resign, following recent rulings on the land issue, a newspaper reported on Monday.

According to The Herald, Deputy Chairman of the War Veterans for Harare Province Mike Moyo said on Sunday that the war veterans are now declaring a war on the country's judges, whom are accused of making their own laws which seek to reverse the gains of the liberation struggle.

He said the judges will be removed from the bench by force if they do not resign.

"We are the custodians of the people's revolution and we will not allow these colonial and racist judges to continue to serve white colonial interests in Zimbabwe under the guise of the so- called rule of law," Moyo said.

The Zimbabwean government has over the past few months clashed with the courts and white commercial farmers over the occupation of land by liberation war veterans, who have since this February been occupying the land which they say was seized by colonial settlers from their ancestors.

In some cases, the courts issued orders compelling the government to evict the war veterans from the farms, but the occupations continued.

The country's traditional chiefs should lead all the peasants in the fight to reclaim their land, Moyo added.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- President Robert Mugabe has warned white commercial farmers of expulsion if they continue their court battle against his plan to seize 3,000 white-owned farms and redistribute the land to blacks without land, Zimbabwe's state media reported Sunday.

"I urge farmers to drop the nonsense of fighting the land issue in the courts, as that will make us even more angry," Mugabe said Saturday at a tree-planting ceremony in an eroded tribal area near the capital, Harare, according to the state-controlled Sunday Mail newspaper.

"If the farmers cannot be harmonious, ... then we will ask them to leave our country harmoniously," he said. State radio also reported the comments.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and South African President Thabo Mbeki met with Mugabe on Thursday, and urged Zimbabwe to follow its own laws when seizing land for redistribution.

Zimbabwe's highest court, the Supreme Court, has declared the government land resettlement program illegal because the seizures are not performed in accordance with legislation passed by Mugabe's ruling party in April.

That legislation requires the government to evaluate the value of and pay for improvements, such as roads and irrigation, made to land it seizes. Owners must also receive a three-months notice of the seizure.

The government has also ignored two High Court orders to end ruling party militants' illegal and often violent occupations of about 1,700 white-owned farms. The occupations, described by Mugabe as a justified protest against unfair ownership of land by whites, began in February.

About 4,000 white farmers own a third of Zimbabwe's productive land, where about 2 million farm workers and their family members live. About 7.5 million live on the other two-thirds.

Obasanjo told reporters he warned Mugabe that imbalances in land ownership could only be resolved if legal processes were followed.

"What Zimbabwe should do is strictly follow the law that is already in place," he said, adding that the unrest and economic problems caused by the land issue could spill across borders.

He also said he had been asked mediate between Mugabe and Britain, the former colonial power, over compensation for white land owners -- descendants of colonial era British settlers -- whose farms were being nationalized.

The Sunday Mail reported that Mugabe said Britain had given up its efforts to obstruct Zimbabwe's land reform program.

"(Zimbabwe's) government is now moving on an irreversible course of acquiring land and redistributing it to the people across all the rural provinces," the paper quoted Mugabe as saying.

Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, warned Friday after talks with Mugabe that donors would not finance reforms until laws were obeyed and violence stopped.

Zimbabwe is facing its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980. Farm occupations have cut production of tobacco and other export crops, and most foreign loans have been halted. Hard currency shortages have led to acute shortages of gasoline.

• Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland West (South) and Mashonaland West (North) all reported a relatively quiet weekend.
• Illegal settlers on Cambridge Farm in Marondera North have claimed that the farm is too sandy so are looking to move back to their home area.
• In Wedza, a tractor driver who was ploughing for illegal invaders on Leeds Farm was beaten up over the weekend by farm workers. 
• In Headlands, a group of eight people threatened to burn out Longfields and Fairfields 9 and 10 farms in retribution for the removal of illegal occupiers by police.
• War veteran representative, Mhwariri threatened to bring 600 invaders onto the Chiredzi Farmers' Association Chairman's farm if the farmers continue to take issue of land to the courts.  The representative claimed that a lot of the illegal squatters were MDC supporters who had been put on the properties to discredit  ZANU PF and suggested that the only way forward was to make a deal with the war veterans themselves.