The parliament of Zimbabwe yesterday passed a controversial land law that will allow the government to take land more easily from white farmers, the state news agency Ziana reported.

Parliament, which is dominated by lawmakers from President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF, passed an amendment to the Land Acquisition Act after intense debate.

The new law allows the government to compulsorily acquire white-owned farms only after publishing a notice of intention to take over in the Government Gazette, scrapping the old requirement that a preliminary notice of acquisition by the government should be served personally on the farm owner.

The Government Gazette is a weekly publication sold by the government printers.

The bill was adopted regardless of an adverse report from a special parliamentary legal committee on it.

The committe had argued that some sections of the new law violated the constitution.

The government argues that the law is aimed at helping it to speedily implement land reforms by taking land from whites and giving it to landless blacks.

The opposition had argued that acquiring land without taking the trouble to personally locate the landowners would prejudice absentee landlords.

But Zanu-PF MP and Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa Tuesday was emphatic that the new law was targeting landlords who had long migrated overseas and whom the government had failed to locate.

"No white farmer in Zimbabwe was not aware of the land reform programme and that it was targeting their farms," Chinamasa was quoted as saying by the news agency.

Some 4 500 whites used to own a third of the country's land - 70% of prime farmland - before the government launched a "fast-track" land reform programme in 2000.

Fewer than 400 white farmers now remain in farming in Zimbabwe and own just three per cent of the country's land, according to a government audit of the land reform programme. – Sapa-AFP.