VICTORIA FALLS (Zimbabwe): Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, host of
                  the Third Southern African International Dialogue (SAID '99), called yesterday
                  for serious reforms to the global financial system.

                  He said the experiences of both Asia and Southern and Eastern Africa's worst
                  financial crises in the last two years, which were spawned by currency
                  speculators and hedge funds, had alerted developing countries to the dangers of
                  exposing themselves to markets and financial systems.

                  "No economic empowerment initiatives can thrive under the threat of
                  unregulated currency trading.

                  "This situation is made worse by the crippling foreign debt burden weighing
                  down on most developing economies," he said in his opening speech
                  yesterday.

                  He said that past and present international economic orders had demonstrated
                  that developing countries had remained ill-equipped to take advantage of
                  globalisation and risked being further marginalised.

                  Globalisation, he said, could result in the polarisation of the majority of people
                  in the world, giving rise to a very unstable macro-economic environment.

                  "It could mean getting swamped by the rich from the North who appear to enjoy
                  all the advantages at the expense of the South, whose condition continues to
                  worsen," he said.

                  Mugabe said the euphoria and enthusiasm with which globalisation had been
                  accepted by the rich countries compared with the luke-warm and guarded
                  optimism of the developing countries, were a clear manifestation of the
                  contrasting fortunes, reflecting that costs and benefits were unevenly
                  distributed.