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Mugabe begins Zim crackdown
04/04/2008 07:12 - (SA)
Harare - Intruders ransacked offices of the main opposition party and police detained foreign journalists in an ominous sign that President Robert Mugabe might turn to intimidation and violence in trying to stave off an electoral threat to his 28-year rule.
Earlier on Thursday, Mugabe apparently launched his campaign for an expected run-off presidential ballot even before the official results of Saturday's election were announced, with state media portraying the opposition as divided and controlled by former colonial ruler Britain.
Five days after the vote, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission still had not released results on the presidential election despite increasing international pressure, including from former UN chief Kofi Annan, who recently mediated an end to Kenya's post election violence.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change already asserted its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the presidency outright, but said it was prepared to compete in any run-off.
Tried to reassure security chiefs
The police raids came a day after official results showed Mugabe's party had lost control of parliament's 210-member lower house. The election commission was slow on the 60 elected seats in the Senate, releasing the first returns late Thursday that gave five seats each to the opposition and ruling party.
Tsvangirai tried on Thursday to reassure security chiefs who vowed a week ago not to serve anyone but Mugabe, according to a source close to the opposition leader. But an agreed meeting with seven generals was cancelled when the officers said that they had been ordered not to attend and that they would be under surveillance, the source said.
The man, who requested anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, gave The Associated Press a copy of a letter signed by Tsvangirai outlining "MDC guarantees to the uniformed forces of Zimbabwe." It was given to the generals earlier in the day, he said.
The letter promises generous retirement packages for those unwilling to serve an MDC government. It also promises not to take back farms given to officers under Mugabe's land reform programme, except in cases in which an officer got several farms or if land was being neglected.
It was not clear who ordered the generals not to attend the meeting, but the fact that some senior officers apparently were willing to meet with Tsvangirai underlined reports of rifts within the highly politicized upper echelons of Zimbabwe's security forces.
'A war'
Diplomats in Harare and at the United Nations said Mugabe was planning to declare a 90-day delay to a presidential run-off to give security forces time to clamp down. The law requires a run-off be held within 21 days of an election, but Mugabe could change that with a presidential decree, a Western diplomat in Harare said.
A diplomat at the UN Security Council, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said if the run-off was put off the council might have to take up the issue.
MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti said hotel rooms used as offices by the opposition at a Harare hotel were ransacked by intruders he believed were either police or agents of the feared Central Intelligence Organisation.
"Mugabe has started a crackdown," Biti told The Associated Press. "It is quite clear he has unleashed a war."
Biti said the raid at the Meikles Hotel targeted "certain people ... including myself." He said Tsvangirai was "safe" but had cancelled plans for a news conference. Tsvangirai was arrested and severely beaten by police a year ago after a banned opposition rally.
In a further signal of the government's hardening mood, heavily armed riot police surrounded and entered a Harare hotel housing foreign correspondents and took five away, lawyers said.
Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said Times correspondent Barry Bearak, a winner of a 2002 Pulitzer Prize, was among them. The identities of the other reporters hadn't been determined.
Journalists jailed
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists expressed alarm and called for the reporters' immediate release.
The US-based National Democratic Institute said late on Thursday that one of its staff members was detained by Zimbabwean authorities at Harare's airport as he tried to leave the country. Dileepan Sivapathasundaram, a US citizen, had been working with local groups who were monitoring election monitors, the group said.
The non-profit organisation said it had been denied access to and information about Sivapathasundaram and called for his release.
Zimbabwe lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said two of the journalists were jailed and told they would be charged on Friday with practicing journalism without licenses. She said the other three were released.
Independent election observers say their projections based on election results posted at a representative sample of local polling stations indicate Tsvangirai won the most votes in the presidential contest, but not enough to avoid a run-off. Offices of the MDC have been ransacked while police detained foreign journalists in an ominous sign that President Robert Mugabe might turn to violence.
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