The United Nations human rights chief said Friday that Western sanctions against Zimbabwe's president and his loyalists should be suspended, at least until elections, saying the measures have hurt the country's poorest and most vulnerable people.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said the sanctions act as a disincentive to foreign banks and investors and appear to have cut down certain imports and exports. These unintended side-effects affect the overall economy and, in turn, the country's poorest and most vulnerable populations who also face political instability and violence, she said.

President Robert Mugabe's party blames sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States for a decade of economic turmoil. But critics say the mess was Mugabe's own doing, pointing to the often-violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms that began in 2000 and that disrupted the agriculture-based economy.