South African President Thabo Mbeki has said the US was wrong to describe Zimbabwe as an "outpost of tyranny".
The US decision to place Zimbabwe alongside Cuba, Belarus, Burma, Iran and North Korea in a list of tyrannical states was "an exaggeration", he said.
The US and EU accuse Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe of election rigging and human rights abuses.
But Mr Mbeki said quiet diplomacy rather than outspoken criticism would lead to real change in the country.
"To put all these countries together and say Zimbabwe's one of these outposts of tyranny - how do you justify that?" he told the Financial Times newspaper in an interview.
"It doesn't mean that there's nothing that's gone wrong in Zimbabwe, but to describe it as an outpost of tyranny..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4286673.stm