"This is like Pol Pot going to a human rights conference,"

Guardian:

Robert Mugabe made a surprise appearance yesterday at a world food summit in Rome, drawing fierce criticism from the British government, which accused him of causing Zimbabwe's food crisis.

In his first official trip abroad since coming second in presidential elections in March, Mugabe attended the summit organised by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation to address the global crisis caused by dramatic increases in the prices of staple foods over the past year.

"This is like Pol Pot going to a human rights conference," Mark Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, told the Guardian. "Zimbabwe is one of the few countries whose food crisis is not due to climate change or global prices, but due to the disastrous policies pursued by Mugabe."

Australia's foreign minister, Stephen Smith, said Mugabe's attendance was obscene. "This is a person who has presided over the starvation of his people."

...

Neither Mugabe, nor Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were invited to the summit's opening dinner hosted by Silvio Berlusconi and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, last night.

Ed Schafer, the US agriculture secretary, said yesterday he would not be meeting Mugabe, and said he hoped the appearance of the Zimbabwean leader and Ahmadinejad, would not distract attention from the global food crisis which has added more than 100 million people to the ranks of the world's hungry in less than a year.

...

Mugabe is probably disappointed he can't have those who object to his trip beaten with a club while being told "Mugabe is right." That is his normal way of dealing with dissent. This may be one of the few times I have ever agreed with Mark Malloch Brown on anything.

Mugabe has gotten to used to the respect he unduly receives in Africa.