By Ingrid Melander
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union extended a travel ban to 11 more Zimbabwean officials on Monday and joined calls for President Robert Mugabe to step down after 28 years in power.
Spreading cholera, food shortages and economic collapse have brought new demands for Mugabe's resignation from his old foes in the West. He blames Western sanctions for Zimbabwe's hardship. Critics blame his increasingly authoritarian rule.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels had added 11 more names to a list of 160 Zimbabweans -- including Mugabe -- who are banned from visiting the bloc, a move meant to increase the pressure on Zimbabwe's government.
"I think the moment has arrived to put all the pressure for Mugabe to step down," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said earlier.
Echoing similar calls from the United States and former colonial power Britain, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said "President Mugabe must go. Zimbabwe has suffered enough."
But Zimbabwean Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said Mugabe was constitutionally elected and rejected such demands.
"No foreign leader, regardless of how powerful they are, has the right to call on him to step down on their whim," Ndlovu told Reuters.
South African officials were in Zimbabwe to assess the scale of the crisis, responding to an unprecedented call for international help from Mugabe's government.
Basic foodstuffs are running out and a cholera epidemic has killed at least 575 people, infected thousands and spread to South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana and Zambia. The South African delegation was due to report back late on Monday.
South Africa's health ministry said on Monday that eight people had died from cholera in a province bordering Zimbabwe.
Prices of goods are doubling every 24 hours, and the 100 million Zimbabwean dollar a week limit for bank withdrawals buys only three loaves of bread in the once relatively prosperous country.
CONTAMINATED WATER
Hopes of rescuing Zimbabwe have dimmed while deadlock continues between Mugabe and opposition rival Morgan Tsvangirai over forming a power-sharing government in line with a deal in September that followed widely condemned and violent elections.
The health system cannot cope with the cholera epidemic. The water supply network has collapsed, forcing people to drink from contaminated wells and streams.
Zimbabwe has accused former colonial power Britain of using the economic crisis and the cholera epidemic to rally Western support for an invasion of Zimbabwe.
"There is a crying need for change in Zimbabwe," British Foreign Minister David Miliband said in Brussels.
Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga urged the African Union on Sunday to hold an emergency summit to formulate a resolution to send troops into Zimbabwe to deal with the crisis.
Botswanan Foreign Minister Phandu Skelemani and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel laureate, have also called for Mugabe's removal.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement issued by the Elders, a group of prominent figures that includes ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Tutu, that there was "bitter disappointment in the current leadership."
South Africa's powerful COSATU trade union federation said on Monday that 38 members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions arrested during protests last week had been released after five days in detention.
Seven of those released had appeared in court and been charged "with inciting the public to rise against the government" before being released on bail, COSATU said.
(Additional reporting by Nelson Banya, James Mackenzie and Francois Murphy in Paris and Paul Simao in Pretoria; editing by Matthew Tostevin)
