Archives reveal options considered by Tony Blair’s government for dealing with Zimbabwean dictator in 2004
The Foreign Office cautioned against UK military intervention to overthrow the former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe in 2004, advising it was not a “serious option”, recently released documents show.
Policy papers show Tony Blair’s government weighed up options on how best to handle the “depressingly healthy” 80-year-old dictator, who refused to step down while the country descended into violence and economic chaos.
Faced with Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party winning a 2005 election, and a year after the UK joined a US coalition to overthrow the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, No 10 asked the Foreign Office in July 2004 to produce options.
Officials agreed the UK’s policy of isolating Mugabe and building an international consensus for change was not working, and had not managed to secure support from key Africans, notably the then South African president Thabo Mbeki, documents released to the National Archives at Kew, west London, show.
