Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has sworn in a new more hardline cabinet.

He said his "war cabinet" would tackle the country's economic problems and counter opposition from the international community to his policy of land reform.

He also said they would address action by Britain - the former colonial power - and its allies in interfering in Zimbabwe's affairs.

One political casualty is the moderate finance minister, Simba Makoni, who is said to have had disagreements with other ministers and resigned.

'Ethnic cleansing'

Earlier, Zimbabwe angrily rejected weekend criticism over President Mugabe's two-year campaign to transfer white-owned farms to black Zimbabweans.

Jonathan Moyo: Ethnic cleansing slur 'a joke'

Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said in an interview with the official Herald newspaper that the white Commonwealth was doing everything possible, including telling outright lies, to defend white supremacy in Africa.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Sunday that his country might impose sanctions on Zimbabwe for what he described as ethnic cleansing of white farmers ordered off their land to make way for new black farmers.

But Mr Moyo described these claims as absurd, saying land reform was legal.

"The allegation of ethnic cleansing is not only outrageous, it is a joke. They wish there was ethnic cleansing to justify foreign intervention."

Food crisis

On Sunday, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw accused President Robert Mugabe of plunging the country into starvation in the name of land reform.

Mr Moyo said it was black Africans who grew food - all they needed was land.

Straw: Keen to isolate Mugabe's government

And he said that the West was trying to use Zimbabwe's current food shortages to maintain the white domination of land ownership, saying the reason the country was facing starvation was due to drought.

Critics blame food shortages in Zimbabwe partly on the disruption to farming caused by the drive - which the government says is aimed at correcting colonial-era inequities.

At least six million people - about half Zimbabwe's population - are threatened by famine, according to UN figures.

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President Mugabe is banned under sanctions from travelling to much of the West, but is due to attend the 10-day United Nations environmental summit in South Africa.

The main opposition party in Zimbabwe has staged the first of a number of protests there, with some 200 members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) marching through Johannesburg calling for new elections and the removal of the president.