HARARE, December 30. /TASS/. Britain once briefly considered using military force to oust the first leader of the independent Republic of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, the Financial Times reported quoting data recently released from the National Archives.

This option was considered in 2004, when London realized that Mugabe, despite his advanced age, remained "depressingly fit," the paper said.

Zimbabwe was suffering hyperinflation, the sometimes violent occupation of white-owned farms and election rigging and harassment of the opposition by Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party.

Mugabe, who turned 80 in 2004, had become increasingly dictatorial, twice having his rival Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, arrested on serious criminal charges. Mugabe had defeated Tsvangirai in a presidential election in 2002, but polling had been marred by vote-rigging allegations.

The British authorities, including the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, were at sea at how to deal with the former colony, the newspaper notes. They were terrified Mugabe would be re-elected president in 2005. The newspaper cites a report by British High Commissioner (ambassador) to Harare Brian Donnelly compiled by him before his final departure at the end of his assignment in the country: "If our best efforts fail and Mugabe wins again, then I think we should be ready to undertake some radical reappraisal if Zimbabwe is to be saved from another three years of turbulence and decline. Mugabe remains depressingly fit and focused on his own agenda."

Based on Donnelly's opinion, Kara Owen, who was private secretary of the then British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, sent her memorandum to the prime minister's office under the heading "Removing Mugabe." "We know from Afghanistan, Iraq and Yugoslavia that changing a government and/or its bad policies is almost impossible from the outside," the newspaper quoted her as saying. Owen adds, referring to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US-led coalition and the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein, "If we really want to change the situation on the ground in Zimbabwe, we have to do to Mugabe what we have just done to Saddam." Then, however, she came to the conclusion that such a step would cost London too much. As a result, it was decided to try to isolate the Mugabe government internationally, while offering discreet support for the democratic opposition.

Mugabe remained in power until he was ousted at the age of 93 via coup in 2017. He died in a hospital in Singapore in 2019, aged 95. Tsvangirai died in 2018.