Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe has failed in his quest to secure a US$1 billion loan from China to pay for desperately needed fuel, electricity and medicine, according to reports.
Mr Mugabe has spent the past several weeks urging his last remaining friends, South Africa and China, to step in and bail out his ailing economy after the International Monetary Fund threatened to cut his last lines of credit.
Citing sources who accompanied Mr Mugabe to Beijing last week, South Africa's authoritative Independent on Sunday said the Zimbabwean delegation was told the loan would be refused.
China has pledged to veto further sanctions if they are called for at the UN but baulked at granting a loan.
'While they [the Chinese] are willing to provide infrastructural help on generous credit terms, they are not willing to throw huge amounts of money at us,' according to an anonymous Zimbabwean official who was party to the talks.
Chinese officials fear the loan would never be repaid. Mr Mugabe had offered farming concessions, and even stakes in foreign-owned mines in his country, but this was not enough, the paper said.