BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.

Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.

Coming to live from London, I'm Regina Vaidyanarvan.

Coming up later in the programme, we'll hear from a journalist in the Cuban capital, Havana,

for the latest on the shooting incidents off the Cuban coast, which has left four people dead.

And we'll also bring you a special report on drugs gangs in Mexico. But first, for a US administration which likes to do deals, the failure of

this one has far-reaching consequences. The American embassy in Zimbabwe says it's ending some

$367 million of health funding to the country, which is used to support the treatment of HIV and AIDS,

tuberculosis, malaria and maternal and child health. It leaves 1.2 million men, women and children

who currently rely on American funds for their HIV treatment, now in limbo. Well, the US blames

Zimbabwe for the breakdown in the agreement, saying that it's already

signed health funding deals with 16 African nations.

But Zimbabwe said it had no choice but to back out.

In short, it felt that it was an unequal deal.

Well, I've been speaking to the BBC's Shingai Nyoka, Ian Harare, who explained first the government's position.

Well, Zimbabwe is of the belief that this deal, which essentially was a memorandum of understanding

discussions with the US about the US providing Zimbabwe with over $360 million US dollar in assistance in the health sector.

And so these talks were ongoing.

And then Zimbabwe essentially is saying that the US's demands are an unequal exchange, that they're lopsided,

that Zimbabwe is being asked to share sensitive data in terms of its biological resources, biological samples related to disease

control over an extended period of time without any real guarantee that Zimbabwe would benefit from any kind of research

in terms of vaccines and treatments. Yeah, I mean, I think the government in Zimbabwe described

...