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Zim: a weekend face-off
10/04/2008 21:33 - (SA)
Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's opposition ruled out Thursday a run-off vote between leader Morgan Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe as the two looked set for a weekend summit showdown on the crisis.
Twelve days after the presidential poll with still no official result, Tsvangirai's number two said there was no way the opposition would take part in a run-off as its man had clearly won outright.
"We will not participate in a re-run of elections because we won that election hands down without a need for a re-run," Tendai Biti told a press conference in Johannesburg.
Afterwards he told AFP that Tsvangirai would be at an emergency summit of southern African leaders in Zambia on Saturday which Mugabe's party has already said the veteran president plans to attend.
"Morgan has been formally invited to the SADC meeting and he will definitely be there," Biti said.
Emergency summit
The 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) has called the emergency summit in a bid to break the impasse between Mugabe's ruling party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
"If there is a SADC meeting confirmed by Zambia, President Mugabe will definitely be there," Mugabe's deputy information minister Bright Matonga told AFP.
"There is nothing unusual about his attendance. SADC has obviously come under a lot of international pressure over the Zimbabwe elections and needs to be briefed about what is happening here."
A source in Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa's office told AFP invitations had been issued and Mugabe was fully expected to attend.
Mbeki to attend
The attendance was also confirmed of SA President Thabo Mbeki who has come under fire for his so far muted response to the crisis.
The Zimbabwe opposition was furious when a team of SADC observers gave the March 29 polls a clean bill of health before the results had been announced.
The MDC has called on the region's leaders to use the summit to call time on Mugabe's tenure, but the South African government for one has already rejected any notion it would do so.
"We are not a government who can ask other presidents to step down," deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad told journalists in Pretoria.
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