Following months of Zimbabwe’s brutal “Drive Out Trash” campaign, pleasantries exchanged between Mugabe and a UN delegation may have made some headway. The UN report on the situation, according to Claudia Rosett, began “with a delicacy over-zealously inappropriate in itself to dealings with the tyrant whose regime has been responsible for wreck of Zimbabwe” by describing Mugabe’s reception of the UN officials with a “warm e.”

Despite the ings of the UN report with respect to policy solutions (more aid!), bination of a “stick and carrot” approach may be bearing some measure of success. ENI reports today:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was being feted as a key African leader in China when his security forces finally declared a respite in a two-month long destruction of homes of poor people in urban areas that triggered the ire of international church groups and the United Nations. The South African Council of Churches said a container of relief supplies would be sent to Zimbabwe at the beginning of August as part of its “Operation Hope for Zimbabwe”, aimed at relieving suffering after the government’s Operation Murambatsvina which means in the Shona language, “Drive Out Trash”.