AN alleged plot to drive most of Zimbabwe’s 50,000 remaining whites out of the country is being investigated by the Foreign Office.

The Sunday Times has obtained a document, apparently drawn up on the orders of a senior official in President Robert Mugabe’s secret police, which calls for the bombing of an economic target in Zimbabwe that could be blamed on “British funded terrorists”.

Diplomatic relations with Britain could then be broken off and all British nationals told to leave within 48 hours or risk being interned as suspected terrorists or terrorist sympathisers, says the document.

It is dated June 8, 2004 and is headed Solution to the White Problem.

It suggests that 75% of the whites left in Zimbabwe have connections with Britain and would follow UK passport- holders who were being expelled. Police “intimidation” at roadblocks would cause many others to give up their struggle to stay in the country.

“We realistically believe that expelling the British citizens will cause an 80% to 90% drop in the population within six months,” says the document. “If implemented soon, we could be almost entirely free of them before the final run-up to the parliamentary elections (next year).”

The paper, which purports to come from an advisory committee working on the instructions of the director-general in charge of operations at Mugabe’s Central Intelligence Organisation, was leaked to the British embassy in Harare last week. Officials there are working to authenticate it. A reporter who rang a telephone number on the document found himself connected with a member of the CIO’s staff.

“The sentiment is not very nice but until we can check it, we don’t want to say any more,” said a Foreign Office spokesman in London. “We are looking into it.”

The seven-page document is introduced as “the simplest and quickest method of ridding Zimbabwe of all undesirable whites without exposing us to an overwhelming backlash”.

Observers believe that if implemented, such a programme of “ethnic cleansing” would produce an exodus of terrified whites unparalleled in Africa in the past 40 years.

The document acknowledges there are problems with a scheme to nationalise land announced by Mugabe’s regime two weeks ago. This was interpreted as a measure to get rid of more whites following the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms since 2000.

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