The Zimbabwean government has dropped nine farms owned by the South African Oppenheimer mining dynasty from a list of white-owned farms to be seized for land redistribution, it was reported yesterday.
"Some 180 farms, among them six owned by foreign nationals and nine belonging to the Oppenheimer family, have been spared from acquisition," the government-owned Herald newspaper said.
"The de-listing comes in the wake of representations by diplomatic missions lodged with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to have them spared."
The Herald quoted the head of policy planning at the foreign ministry, Mr Samuel Mhango, as saying the Oppenheimer farms were dropped because "they fell in the agro-industry and ranching category". Mr Mhango did not elaborate.
The government says the fabulously wealthy Oppenheimers own 960,000 hectares (2.4 million acres) of land, the size of Belgium, in Zimbabwe.
President Robert Mugabe has targeted more than 3,000 white-owned farms as part of a drive to redistribute land he says was stolen by British settlers more than a century ago.
In Washington yesterday, Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, asked the US to put pressure on Mr Mugabe to accept international observers ahead of the presidential election expected to be held next year.
Mr Tsvangirai also touched on AIDS, which he described as "a national catastrophe" for Zimbabwe, calling for increased financial aid for drug purchases.
While the world's political elite wound up a UN summit on the AIDS pandemic in New York yesterday, desperate Zimbabweans have turned to medicine men to fill the gap left by a public health system on the verge of collapse.
Health experts say one in five Zimbabweans is living with the HIV virus and the government estimates 2,000 people die of AIDS each week. Life expectancy may fall to 27 years.