The New Zealand Government is supporting renewed international condemnation of Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe, as a cholera epidemic and food shortages cause misery in the African nation.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has branded Mr Mugabe's government a "blood-stained regime" and said it was responsible for the cholera epidemic that has killed at least 575 people. The world must tell Mugabe "enough is enough", he said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday the veteran leader's departure from office was long overdue.
New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully said the Government strongly supports the statements by Mr Brown and others who have expressed concern. But he said it was only the South African Development Community, and particularly South Africa itself, which can have any effective influence.
Mr Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba was reported in the state controlled Sunday Mail that the growing Western criticism signalled a plot to oust the president's government militarily.
"I don't know what this mad prime minister (Brown) is talking about. He is asking for an invasion of Zimbabwe ... but he will come unstuck," Charamba was quoted as saying.
