Australia's government Sunday barred the national cricket team from touring Zimbabwe in September, saying it wanted to avoid giving a propaganda victory to "grubby dictator" President Robert Mugabe.
"The government through the foreign minister has written to Cricket Australia instructing that the tour not go ahead," Howard told ABC television."We don't do this lightly, but we are convinced that for the tour to go ahead there would be an enormous propaganda boost for the Mugabe regime.The Mugabe regime at present is behaving like the Gestapo towards its political opponents, the living standards of the country are probably the lowest of any in the world and you have an unbelievable rate of inflation. "