President Mugabe of Zimbabwe has once more threatened not to compensate white farmers whose land has been recently acquired by the government.

In an address to diplomats and state officials, Mr Mugabe said the government would issue promissory notes to white farmers and pay them in the future if the money was found.

Zimbabwe says Britain, as the former colonial power, should fund the scheme to correct the legacy of unbalanced land ownership where about four-thousand white farmers own a third of all farmland.

More than nine-hundred farms have been earmarked for re-distribution to black subsistence farmers.