HARARE, Zimbabwe -- The leader of Zimbabwe's controversial campaign to seize hundreds of farms said on Tuesday white farmers had declared war on the country's black majority and vowed to defeat them.

Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi, chairman of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, told Reuters the invasion of white-owned farms would continue."If the white people continue to be funny, we will continue our program of reclaiming our ancestral land," he said.

"They have declared war on us by trying to mobilize racist and imperialist forces against our country, against the revolutionary forces of our country, the entire black people and our government, led by President (Robert) Mugabe.

"We will not let them win this war," he said.

"Hitler" is a nom de guerre that the Polish-educated Hunzvi adopted while fighting in the liberation war against white minority rule in the 1970s.

Thousands of veterans of the war have occupied between 500 and 1,000 farms in support of Mugabe's call for the redistribution of land from whites to blacks, who were stripped of their land under British colonial rule.

About 4,500 mostly white commercial farmers control some 75 percent of Zimbabwe's most productive farmland and constitute the single biggest source of export revenue.

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Hundreds of white farmers and their families met in the town of Karoi, 155 miles west of Harare, to plan strategy.

"Don't use violence . . . we just have to ride this out. It's not a land issue; it's a political issue," Alex van Leenhoff told the meeting convened by the Commercial Farmers Union.

Van Leenhoff signed away half his farm on Sunday to war veterans who two days earlier had punched and whipped him in front of his wife and children.

Farming sources said on Tuesday another eight farms were taken over northeast and south of Harare overnight.

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