Mugabe, at food summit, defends agricultural policy

ROME (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe defended his agricultural policies on Tuesday against widespread accusations he was pushing a country once known as the breadbasket of Africa into starvation.

"My country's primary agriculture policy objective remains that of ensuring national and household food security through our own production," he said in a speech to a U.N. food summit in Rome, where he was snubbed by many participants.

Most Western representatives at the summit said they would have no contact with Mugabe. Some expressed outrage he was allowed to attend a summit on a global crisis of soaring food prices and shortages, given that many blame him for plummeting farm production in his own country.

But Mugabe, in his speech to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), defended his land redistribution policy of seizing white-owned property to give it to black farmers.

"Thus, over the past decade, Zimbabwe has democratized the land ownership patterns in the country, with over 300,000 previously landless families now proud landowners," he said.

Critics say the policy has failed because he neglected to equip resettled farmers with adequate skills and equipment.

The European Union has a long-standing travel ban on Mugabe, but since the FAO summit is taking place under a United Nations umbrella he was invited along with other world leaders.

Zimbabwe's inflation is 165,000 percent, unemployment 80 percent and there are chronic shortages of basic necessities including food and fuel. Some 3.5 million people have fled to escape poverty.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Zimbabwe's food problems were for the most part due to the "ruinous" agricultural and economic policies enacted by Mugabe's government and that he served as an example of "what not to do".

Britain's International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said: "Mr Mugabe's empty words here in Rome will do nothing for the empty stomachs of millions of his fellow citizens who have been left impoverished and hungry by his misrule."

Mugabe, on his first official trip abroad since March 29 parliamentary elections which his ruling party lost, last month announced his government had bought 600,000 tonnes of maize to ease food shortages.

He attacked former colonial power Britain and its allies including the United States and Europe, accusing them of trying to "cripple Zimbabwe's economy and thereby effect illegal regime change in our country."

Mugabe, who faces a June 27 presidential election run-off, was the only leader to read his speech with a bodyguard standing just behind him on the podium.

(Additional reporting by Laura MacInnis and Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Jon Boyle)