HARARE (Reuters) - U.S. radical black leader Louis Farrakhan, on a three-day visit to Zimbabwe, gave his backing to President Robert Mugabe's land seizure campaign, state media reported on Saturday.
Farrakhan, who has led a Chicago-based Muslim movement called Nation of Islam since the 1970s, was due to meet Mugabe on Saturday after arriving in Harare on Friday.
"Speaking soon after his arrival...Mr. Farrakhan said he was in full support of President Mugabe's policies, especially the land issue as it was aimed at correcting a historical injustice," the state-owned Bulawayo Chronicle said in a report.
The Zimbabwean government is pressing on with its seizures of white-owned farms despite criticism that the drive is worsening a severe food crisis in the southern African state. Nearly 3,000 white farmers have been ordered to vacate their farms by August 10 to make way for land-less blacks.
Eleven white farmers have been killed and thousands of farm workers assaulted and displaced since invasions of white-owned farms by pro-government militants began more than two years ago.
Mugabe, who is accused by the opposition and many Western powers of cheating in presidential polls in March, says the land program is an effort to correct imbalances in land ownership created by British colonialism.
White farmers say they support land redistribution, but are opposed to the methods employed by Mugabe, who has ruled the former Rhodesia since independence in 1980.
Farrakhan, who attended the launch of the new African Union (AU) in the South African resort of Durban last week, has visited Zimbabwe before.
But the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp (ZBC) said on Saturday this trip showed that Mugabe's government was not isolated.
"Western powers, including the United States and former colonial master Britain, are desperately trying to portray the Zimbabwe government as isolated," the ZBC said.
The U.S. and the European Union have imposed travel restrictions on Mugabe and other senior ruling party officials since his controversial re-election in March.
Mugabe attended the AU summit last week, but Zimbabwe was not on the official agenda and Mugabe did not give a speech during the launch of the new pan-African group, which replaced the Organization for African Unity (OAU).
Farrakhan, who once called Judaism a "gutter religion" and said Adolf Hitler was a "wickedly great man," was banned from Britain in 1986 for expressing racist and anti-Semitic views. The ban was upheld in a British high court in April