Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge denied yesterday that Zimbabwe was snubbing a top UN official on a food assessment mission who was scheduled to meet with government ministers this week.

Mudenge told a press conference that the government could not meet with James Morris, the special UN envoy for humanitarian needs and head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), on Tuesday because it was holding its weekly cabinet meeting.

"We were in cabinet the whole day. If Morris had come he would have met nobody," said Mudenge.

Morris, who is the agency's executive director, is on a five-nation tour of the region to assess food security. He travelled to Malawi on Tuesday after the Zimbabwe leg of the trip was scrapped.

Aid agencies estimate that around five-million Zimbabweans will require emergency food aid this year, but the Zimbabwe government has said it will not appeal for food aid because it expects a bumper harvest.

A crop and food assessment mission comprising UN and government officials was cancelled last month when the government recalled its field officers.

Press reports here speculated that the Zimbabwe government was deliberately avoiding Morris, who has been to Zimbabwe at least twice in the last three years as the country battles with chronic food shortages.

"You all read big things into small things," said Mudenge, adding that the government planned to reschedule the meeting with Morris to a later date.

The minister also hit out at UN agencies operating in Zimbabwe for employing "political zealots" sympathetic to the opposition.

He cited two recent cases in which local UN security officers circulated documents claiming that the lives of UN workers were in danger because of the security situation in the country.

"This harms the relationship between Zimbabwe and these agencies," said Mudenge.

"These organisations should be a little more careful about employing these political zealots, and make them get the cover of the UN system to propagate their evil message," he said.

Mudenge warned that the government would clamp down on such individuals if the UN did not.

The Zimbabwe government accuses the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of deliberately painting a grim picture about the situation in Zimbabwe to isolate President Robert Mugabe's government. – Sapa-AFP.