HARARE (AFP) — The European Union on Friday threatened new sanctions against Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe, blamed for political deadlock, a surging cholera epidemic and runaway inflation.
With no sign of an end to the crisis, Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, whose country holds the EU presidency, said that European nations were considering new sanctions against Mugabe and his inner circle.
In Geneva a UN agency said Friday cholera has claimed 2,225 lives since August, warning that prevention efforts have failed to stop it while the nation's economic collapse has left public hospitals empty.
Zimbabwe's stunning economic decline came into even sharper focus as the central bank unveiled a 100-trillion-dollar note -- just a week after introducing a series of billion-dollar denominations that have already lost most of their value.
"The European Union is contemplating the implementation of further restrictive measures," Schwarzenberg told reporters after meeting his South African counterpart outside Cape Town.
"The sanctions, we have not yet decided about them. They would be what we call tailor-made -- not hitting the broad population but hitting those who are responsible and in power," Schwarzenberg said.
The comments added to pressure on Mugabe as he prepared for a new round of South African-mediated talks with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on forming a unity government.
Zimbabwe is mired in political limbo following elections last March, when Tsvangirai won a first-round presidential vote and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) seized a parliamentary majority for the first time.
The MDC victory was greeted with a wave of political attacks that Amnesty International says left more than 180 people dead -- mostly opposition supporters.
Citing the violence, Tsvangirai pulled out of a run-off election in June, allowing 84-year-old Mugabe to claim a one-sided victory condemned by western powers.
Former South African president Thabo Mbeki brokered a power-sharing deal signed September 15, but the rivals have yet to agree on how to form a unity government, while attacks and arrests of MDC members have continued.
Hoping to salvage the deal, South Africa's new President Kgalema Motlanthe plans to fly to Harare on Monday with Mbeki and Mozambican President Armando Emilio Guebuza to mediate new talks.
Under renewed pressure, Mugabe's deputy information minister Bright Matonga made unusually conciliatory remarks during an interview on South African radio.
"We cannot go it all alone. This is the point we are making. We need the MDC," Matonga said, adding that the government would investigate claims that opposition members and rights activists had been abducted and tortured by security agents.
"These abductions and torture will not take us anywhere," Matonga said.
The political stalemate has only fuelled the economic crisis that has impoverished the country, leaving nearly half the population dependent on food aid.
Inflation was last reported at 231 million percent in July, but the Washington think-tank Cato Institute has estimated it now at 89.7 sextillion percent -- a figure expressed with 21 zeroes.
Meanwhile, a Harare High Court Friday dismissed the bail appilication of seven opposition activists accused of banditry, their lawyer, Alec Muchadehama told AFP.
"The judge said the offence was serious, they were likely to interfere with state witnesses and commit other offences," he said.
The new 100,000,000,000,000 Zim-dollar bill would have been worth about 300 US dollars (225 euros) at Thursday's exchange rate on the informal market, where most currency trading now takes place, but the value of the local currency erodes dramatically every day.
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