Zimbabwe leader Mugabe to U.S. ambassador: "Go to hell"

HARARE, Zimbabwe — President Robert Mugabe told the U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe to "go to hell" Tuesday, after Ambassador Christopher Dell blamed the country's economic and political crisis on mismanagement and corrupt rule.

State media said Dell risked expulsion from the southern African country for his "undiplomatic" criticism of the government in a public lecture.

The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp. (ZBC) said it had asked Mugabe for his reaction to the comments.

"The president said the ambassador must go to hell. The president said: 'I cannot even spell the word Dell with a "D" but an "H" and that is where Dell should go,' " a ZBC correspondent said during a news bulletin.

Dell said last week that Mugabe's government was responsible for plunging Zimbabwe into a crisis that had left it with soaring poverty and chronic food shortages.

Mugabe, 81 and in power for 25 years, embarked on a controversial drive of seizing and redistributing white-owned farms to landless blacks in 2000, and earlier this year tens of thousands of people were made homeless after the government ordered the demolition of shacks and "illegal houses."

Dell, who became ambassador in August 2004, kept a low profile until Oct. 10, when he walked into a restricted area of a botanical garden near Mugabe's residence.

He was held at gunpoint for 90 minutes by the presidential guard as he walked his dog through the National Botanical Gardens, apparently not realizing it was off-limits.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli backed Dell's comments and said the envoy had been called to a meeting at the Zimbabwean Foreign Ministry today. He did not know why the meeting had been called.

"This is not about a speech by our ambassador, it's about failed economic policies of the government of Zimbabwe and President Mugabe," Ereli said when asked about the confrontation between the ambassador and Mugabe.

Mugabe says he has been targeted by foreign opponents led by Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler Britain for his nationalistic policies and says most of Africa is on his side in what he describes as a struggle against imperialism.