Auckland: New Zealand was working with other cricketing nations to keep this year's World Cup cricket out of Zimbabwe, Foreign Minister Phil Goff said in a statement on Wednesday. He said he has also written to New Zealand Cricket asking them to request the International Cricket Council (ICC) to take the six World Cup games out of Zimbabwe. The Commonwealth had suspended Zimbabwe from its councils because of concerns of abuses of human rights and law by President Robert Mugabe's government. "For more than a year the government has been concerned with internal security in Zimbabwe," he added. "I have raised the issue with the New Zealand cricket Board because I am working closely with like-minded governments who wish to see an end to human rights abuses and a flouting of Zimbabwe law by the Mugabe regime. "There is a collective desire that nothing should be done to give comfort to the regime or to acknowledge that what is happening in Zimbabwe is in any sense acceptable. "Our objective in seeking support from the international cricket community to move its fixtures from Zimbabwe is to make clear to President Mugabe that the whole international community views his actions as completely unacceptable," Goff said in the statement.
 Copyright AFP 2001
Extras:
South Africans at loggerheads over Zimbabwe issue
British govt rules out compensation to ECB on boycott
No sings of solution for row, ICC sticks to guns
Tags: cricket, world cup, new zealand, zimbabwe, foreign minister phil goff, new zealand cricket, international cricket council (icc), commonwealth, president robert mugabe, government.
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