Will this be the next great airlift? An interesting story from the BBC. Geoff in Zimbabwe Saturday, 19 January, 2002, 23:09 GMT UK 'plans for Zimbabwe airlift' Zimbabwe's situation "prompted evacuation plan" The Foreign Office is playing down reports that it has drawn up plans for the air rescue of 25,000 Britons living in Zimbabwe. A spokesman said the government "has contingency plans for most countries in the world to assist British citizens in case of emergency". British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw ordered an emergency planning committee to finalise plans for a mass evacuation last month after receiving alarming reports of the deteriorating situation, according to the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. The Foreign Office evaluated that Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe - facing presidential elections in March - was unlikely to relinquish power without a violent struggle, the paper said. The assessment envisaged either a repressive crackdown before the elections or a civil war afterwards if Mugabe uses fraud to cling to power. On Friday, pro-democracy figures in Zimbabwe claimed President Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF had launched a new phase in its violent campaign for the presidential elections and was in the process of declaring all the country's countryside a "no-go zone" to the opposition. Widespread reports from human rights organisations, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and farmers say that thousands of youths have been deployed in rural areas all over the country with orders to drive out the MDC by force. In London on Saturday, hundreds of people joined protests against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, with the organiser Albert Weidemann, calling on the Commonwealth to suspend the nation. The Foreign Office said that for obvious reasons the government did not discuss details of contingency plans. Repression The Foreign Office estimated there were around 40,000 British nationals in Zimbabwe, of whom around 25,000 had registered with the British High Commission. Observers say that with elections only seven weeks away, Mugabe is not about to dismantle the massive apparatus of repression. With the economy in tatters and widespread famine looming, violence appears to be the only way he can beat MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the elections on 9-10 March. The ruling party strategy is being reinforced by the arrest of hundreds of MDC politicians, officials and supporters all over the country on what human rights organisations say are spurious grounds.