HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe today is the perfect humanitarian storm: the convergence of AIDS, poverty, hunger and a despotic regime that cares more about its power than the welfare of its people. Now there is cholera to crown the country's misery.

More than 1,600 Zimbabweans have died of the disease and 30,000 have been infected, according to the World Health Organization. The agency estimates that 60,000 will be infected in the next few months before the deadly outbreak is brought under control.

Yet President Robert Mugabe, 84, blithely announces there is no cholera problem. "Cholera has been arrested," declared Mugabe recently.

"Mugabe has arrested everyone else, so why not arrest cholera?" quipped a Harare journalist.