OHANNESBURG, Jan. 18 — After three days of meetings in Zimbabwe, the State Department's top human rights official said today that he had made no progress in persuading the government of President Robert Mugabe to improve conditions for elections and halt intimidation of the opposition.
In an interview here after his trip, Lorne Craner, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said Zimbabwe was gripped with fear as the presidential election, scheduled for March 9 and 10, approached.
"The electoral environment is very bad," Mr. Craner said. "People fear for their personal safety, even people who are not active in civil society, ordinary people."
Political violence has been intensifying in advance of the electoral showdown between President Mugabe, who has run the country since blacks won majority rule in 1980, and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Once a stable and largely self- sufficient country, Zimbabwe is now struggling, and the opposition party has tapped anger over the country's economic slide and the government's increasingly autocratic rule to mount the most serious challenge Mr. Mugabe has ever faced.
The United States has threatened limited economic sanctions against Mr. Mugabe's government, like freezing the assets of the president and his associates and restricting their travel in the United States. The outcome of Mr. Craner's mission appeared to make such measures more likely. "I conveyed to them that time is just about out," said Mr. Craner, who met with the speaker of the Parliament, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Craner said the Mugabe government appeared determined to maintain its current policy course. "The language I heard was something out of the 1950's or 1960's, about how a shrinking economy is okay, how it doesn't matter if they are isolated even from their neighbors," he said.
Mr. Craner said he would meet with State Department officials to consider what steps the Bush administration should take.
The European Union has been contemplating sanctions as well, and after today may be a step closer to imposing them. At a meeting last week in Brussels, the European Union gave Zimbabwe a week to sign a pledge to allow foreign journalists and election observers into the country. But according to news reports from Brussels, no pledge has arrived.
Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe's minister of information, and George Charamba, the permanent secretary for information, did not respond to telephone calls tonight.
The prospect of American and European action follows several days of diplomatic initiatives aimed at easing the crisis in Zimbabwe, which has aroused deep concern in neighboring countries.
Leaders of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community assembled in Malawi this week for an emergency meeting on the region's biggest crises, including Zimbabwe.
At the meeting, President Mugabe promised to allow international journalists and election observers into the country, and to order investigations of political violence.
A day later, Zimbabwe's Parliament delayed passage of a bill that would have imposed new limits on the country's press and effectively barred foreign correspondents. But the legislation is scheduled to go before Parliament again next week, and the outcome of the vote remains uncertain.
Today, militants of Mr. Mugabe's party seemed to deepen tensions when they stormed white-owned farms in northern Zimbabwe, and youths in government uniforms set up roadblocks to seal off several districts, The Associated Press reported.
