Harare - New Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai Friday gave beleaguered white farmers some reassurance when he said that people invading their properties with fraudulent documents would be arrested.

His remarks come amid a worsening crisis on the estimated 400 white-owned farms left in the country, where President Robert Mugabe's supporters are forcing their way onto the land, evicting families, seizing their crops and assaulting farm workers.

Observers say the invasions provide a visible cause of refusal by Western governments and bilateral institutions to provide the new coalition government with desperately-needed aid.

Western leaders are insisting on evidence of a real departure from Zimbabwe's history of human rights abuses and corruption before contributing large amounts of aid towards rebuilding the bruised economy.

Tsvangirai told a meeting of human rights, development and business organisations he had ordered his ministers of home affairs, to "ensure that all crimes are acted upon and the perpetrators arrested and charged."

The home affairs ministry, which controls the police, is co-administered by Mugabe's Zanu-PF and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The government in 2007 abolished private ownership of farm land and barred farmers from legally contesting the evictions that began in 2000 under the guise of land reform.

In his strongest statement yet on the matter since the new government was inaugurated six weeks ago, Tsvangirai said that most of the disruptions were "actually acts of theft."

It was Tsvangirai's first public speech since his wife, Susan, was killed in a car crash three weeks ago, in which he was lightly injured. (dpa)