The European Commission on Thursday said it was ready to resume full assistance to Zimbabwe if Brussels and Harare mend fences, an official said.

The head of an EU delegation visiting Zimbabwe, Xavier Marchal, said the unity government of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai needed to take responsibility for improving relations with the bloc.

"When and if full normalisation is achieved between the EU and Zimbabwe, as a result of the ongoing political dialogue process launched in Brussels... then massive and full-fledged assistance can resume again," Marchal said.

Marchal's comments come after Mugabe on Tuesday said Zimbabwe was ready to restore relations with the West, and follows the first high-level visit last month by EU officials to Harare in seven years.

Relations between Zimbabwe and the European Union were strained nearly 10 years ago by a series of elections marred by violence and widespread allegations of human rights abuses by Mugabe's government.

The bloc, which maintains a travel ban and asset freeze against Mugabe and his close allies, said last month it was moving toward more structural aid after providing 600-million euros in humanitarian aid between 2002 and 2009.

Marchal told a conference that the EU was ready to help Zimbabwe revive its once-vibrant agriculture sector and blamed poor government policy for the slump in farm production.

"The decline in the agricultural production is indeed related to failing government policies associated to the issues relating to the way the land and agrarian reform programme has been conducted," he said.

Last week, donors including the World Bank said they would contribute 74-million dollars towards the revival of Zimbabwe's farms, up from 25-million last year.

The UN food agency expects Zimbabwe to produce only one-quarter of the food it needs to feed its people, with the harvest expected to drop by 70 percent from last year.

Zimbabwe's agricultural production plummeted after Mugabe's controversial land reforms which saw some 4000 mostly white commercial farmers being evicted from their properties.

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