challenge to Mugabe's power since he
led the country to independencefrom Britain in 1980 and as Zimbabwe grapples
with its worst political andeconomic crisis in decades.

Defence
lawyers have also said the words "assassination" and "coup d'etat"do not
appear either on the video tape or on an audio recording of anearlier
meeting between Ben-Menashe and Tsvangirai in London.

Tsvangirai is
legally challenging Mugabe's victory in March 2002presidential elections,
which both the opposition and several Westerncountries condemned as
fraudulent.

THE appointment of Baroness Valerie Amos as
British internationaldevelopment department secretary, after the resignation
of Clare Short lastMonday, is as historic as it is significant.

The
department is the modernday version of what used to be the colo-niesoffice
set up in 1929, when the UK first recognised its "responsibility forthe
development of its colonies on a continuing basis". The Britishparliament
agreed to set aside a sum not exceeding£1m a year for
thispurpose.

Amos's budget will be about £4,6bn a year in 2005 as a
result of a £1,5bnincrease announced last July. This compares favourably
with the marketcapitalisation of some of SA's leading firms and the budgets
of some poorAfrican countries.

Amos is the first person from a former
British colony (she arrived in the UKfrom Guyana at the age of nine) to
preside over the department that wasclosely associated with the colonial
process. More significantly, she joinsanother child of the colonies Paul
Boateng (treasury secretary and formermember of the UK anti-apartheid
movement) as the second senior black personin the cabinet of Prime Minister
Tony Blair.

At the prior Labour Party conference Blair challenged Britons
to think aboutsocial mobility, by wondering whether Colin Powell would be in
a similarlysenior post if his parents had emigrated to Britain instead of
the US.

However, Amos's