The European Union has extended sanctions against Zimbabwe for another year.

The sanctions include an arms embargo, travel bans on certain officials and a freezing of their assets.

President Robert Mugabe and more than a hundred ministers and officials are included in the travel bans and freezing of assets.

EU officials accuse them of human rights violations, and violations of freedom of speech and assembly in Zimbabwe.

The sanctions, extended until Feb. 20, 2007 were originally in reaction to the forced transfer of white-owned commercial farms to mainly landless black peasants, and Mugabe's disputed re-election in 2002.

When the government began the land transfer, it said it was to benefit landless black Zimbabweans. But sharp falls in agricultural production soon followed, and Zimbabwe has since endured rampant inflation and food and fuel shortages.

Aid agencies and critics partly blame food shortages on the land reform program. The government blames a long-running drought, and Mugabe has accused the EU of sabotaging the economy.

Zimbabwe, formerly called Rhodesia while under British rule, gained independence in 1980 after a 17-year bush war fought mainly between black liberation movements and the 250,000 white Rhodesians.

The war was all about land and its fair redistribution. Mugabe, a rebel leader, became the head of the country's government, first as prime minister and later as first executive president.

Initially, he extended the hand of reconciliation to the country's remaining whites. But then veterans of the independence war – and many hangers-on paid by the ruling party – began their increasingly violent campaign of farm invasions.

By April 2000, some Mugabe backers said more than 1,000 farms had been occupied by 60,000 "war veterans." But the opposition says half of the "veterans" weren't even born in 1980, when independence was achieved.