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Zimbabwe's
Mugabe Refuses to Bow to
World Pressure
 (AP) - Violence-wracked Zimbabwe needs
United Nations peacekeepers to help prepare the way for new elections,
the country's opposition leader said in a call from his haven at the
Dutch Embassy. "We need a force to protect the people," Morgan
Tsvangirai wrote in an opinion piece published Wednesday in London's
The Guardian newspaper.
Tsvangirai pulled
out of a presidential runoff against President Robert Mugabe scheduled
for Friday, saying attacks on his supporters by police, soldiers and
militant Mugabe party members has made a free and fair vote impossible.
Tsvangirai remains at the Dutch Embassy in Harare, where he sought
refuge following the announcement of his withdrawal on Sunday after
getting a tip soldiers were headed to his home.
"We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the
words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral
rectitude of military force," he said. "Such a force would be in the
role of peacekeepers, not troublemakers. They would separate the people
from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the
democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns."
Mugabe, by all indications intent on extending his nearly three-decade
rule, insists Friday's vote will go ahead and he has grown only more
defiant in the face of growing international pressure.
On Wednesday, opposition officials said police raided one of their
provincial offices. Scores of opposition activists, including
high-ranking party members, have been attacked or killed. The party's
No. 2 leader has been jailed since earlier this month on treason
charges - which can carry the death penalty.
Tsvangirai called Mugabe a "power-crazed despot holding his people
hostage to his delusions, crushing the spirit of his country and
casting the international community as fools."
In New York, Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United Nations said that a
U.S. and British-led conspiracy fooled the U.N. Security Council into
concluding the violence gripping his nation has made it impossible to
hold a fair presidential election.
"We see the international community, the Security Council, has been
duped into believing that there is lawlessness in Zimbabwe and the
opposition cannot campaign, which is not true," Boniface Chidyausiku
told The Associated Press Tuesday.
A day after the 15-nation council unanimously condemned the violence in
Zimbabwe, Chidyausiku said his government can still fairly re-elect
President Robert Mugabe on Friday even though Tsvangirai dropped from
the race.
His party said Tsvangirai would address reporters "on the way forward"
later Wednesday, but did not say where the briefing would be held.
In The Guardian, Tsvangirai acknowledged that calling for international
intervention was sensitive, but said it would offer "the best chance
the people of Zimbabwe would get to see their views recorded fairly and
justly."
Regional heads of state, meanwhile, were meeting in Swaziland in hopes of finding a solution for Zimbabwe.
The Southern African Development Community meeting, though, did not
include South African President Thabo Mbeki. He was appointed by the
bloc more than a year ago to mediate between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, and
in recent weeks has come under pressure to abandon his tactic of "quiet
diplomacy."
Mbeki has refused to publicly denounce Mugabe even as other African
leaders step up their criticism, saying confrontation could backfire.
Mbeki's spokesman said late Tuesday that Mbeki was not going to
Swaziland because he is not a member of the security committee of the
regional bloc, which called the meeting. Mbeki's deputy foreign
minister, Aziz Pahad, told reporters that South Africa may yet send an
envoy to neighboring Swaziland - the countries' capitals are a few
hours drive apart.
Mediation efforts appear aimed at bringing Mugabe and Tsvangirai together in a coalition government.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who has also been trying to broker
an agreement, said Tuesday that Mbeki was trying to persuade Mugabe and
Tsvangirai to share power in a transitional government with Mugabe as
president and Tsvangirai as prime minister. Wade was also proposing
that Tsvangirai take a position junior to Mugabe's, but not that the
coalition be considered merely transitional.
Neither proposal appeared to have been embraced by the rivals.
Tsvangirai has insisted he be president and Mugabe have no role. His
claim to leadership is based on his having come first in a field of
four in the first round of presidential voting March 29, though he did
not win the 50 percent plus one vote necessary to avoid a runoff.
Tsvangirai's party and its allies also won control of Parliament in the
March voting - the first time since independence in 1980 that Mugabe's
ZANU-PF party failed to win a parliamentary majority.
South African officials have offered no details of Mbeki's mediation
agenda. Pahad, his deputy foreign minister, rejected criticism.
"We can only say mediation fails if Zimbabwe gets totally engulfed in a
state of civil war. It's not there yet," Pahad told reporters in the
South African capital Wednesday. "There are three more days to go
(before the vote) and the situation demands we do everything possible
to get Zimbabweans to agree on the way forward."
Tsvangirai, who has called on Mbeki to step down as mediator, wrote in
The Guardian that Mbeki's approach "sought to massage a defeated
dictator rather than show him the door and prod him towards it."
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