Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has claimed the US President Barack Obama and other Western leaders have imposed sanctions on him because they are afraid of him.

Speaking in his rural Zvimba home, Mugabe said that all the white people who are still remaining in the country should go back to England.

The West prefers a weak leader who, they hope, would allow the whites to come back. The British who are here should all go back to England. We now have aeroplanes which can take them back quicker than the ships used by their ancestors. - Robert Mugabe

"The West prefers a weak leader who, they hope, would allow the whites to come back. They think if they intimidate us we will be cowed and allow the whites to come back; that will never happen.

Don't they (whites) know where their ancestors came from? The British who are here should all go back to England. We now have aeroplanes which can take them back quicker than the ships used by their ancestors," said Mugabe, as reported by New Zimbabwe News.

In July, Mugabe declared that no 'white' person can any longer own land in Zimbabwe under the controversial land redistribution programme.

"They can own companies and apartments in our towns and cities but not the soil. It is ours and that message should ring loud and clear in Britain and the United States," said Mugabe.

Mugabe has also warned Zimbabweans against doing farming partnerships with whites.

"If it's contract farming with companies that we know to be genuine we can accept that, but never with individual whites. You have to stop bringing these whites back ... it's a dangerous, dangerous arrangement which we do not want," added Mugabe.

Mugabe was left out of the recent US-Africa summit held in Washington, and despite being invited to the EU-Africa summit in the Belgium capital Brussels in April, he boycotted the summit in protest against his wife being denied a travel visa to join him.