Tsvangirai Presses Mbeki to Demand Election Results

Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, is in South Africa to increase pressure on Robert Mugabe to release the result of the presidential election held 10 days ago, and to admit defeat or hold a clean run-off vote.

The Movement for Democratic Change yesterday won the backing of Gordon Brown who called for "proper international monitoring" of any second round vote amid growing evidence that Mugabe is planning to turn a first round defeat into a run-off victory with a campaign of violence and intimidation that has worked for the ruling Zanu-PF in previous elections.

"I believe there is a united will of the international community that elections have got to be seen to be fair, election results have got to be published, elections have got to be properly monitored," Brown told a news conference.

But Mugabe's opponents are not confident that they will receive similar backing from the region's leaders who have been consistently unwilling to confront Zimbabwe's rulers. South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, angered the MDC when he met Brown in the UK on Sunday but declined to back the prime minister's call for results from the presidential election to be released immediately.

The high court in Harare is expected to rule today on an opposition petition to force the election commission to make public the count that the MDC says will show that its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the election with 50.3 percent of the vote, just above the threshold to avoid a run-off ballot.

The opposition suspects the election commission is delaying the results because they are being tampered with to ensure there is a second round, and to give Zanu-PF time to mobilize its militias.

Mbeki softened his position a little, calling for the release of the results to be "sped up". But MDC officials remain wary of him after what they regard as his duplicity during eight months of mediation on behalf of the Southern African Development Community that were supposed to establish the grounds for free and fair elections.

Mbeki told a dinner in London on Sunday night that he was "pleased with the manner in which the elections were conducted" and attempted to sell the negotiations as a success because they concluded with most of a draft constitution.

"This [the draft constitution] exists, and we agreed a range of things would impact on the elections held now. There was some discussion about postponement but we agreed that the elections should be at the end of March," he said. In fact, the MDC objected to the election being held in March before a new constitution was in place, but Mugabe pressed ahead with them and Mbeki did not object.

The opposition's two negotiators, Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube, have publicly called the talks "a disaster". Even the changes to the laws that were agreed before the election were only partially implemented.

Mbeki has been in regular contact with Tsvangirai over the past week but has not spoken to Mugabe since the election.

"There is a problem with Mbeki. He is not an honest broker," said a senior MDC official. "We came to conclude that he had an agenda to get Mugabe out but keep Zanu-PF in power. We have no confidence in any African leaders to stand up for democracy."

Zanu-PF militia and war veterans invaded more white-owned farms yesterday after Mugabe urged Zimbabweans to "protect their land from former colonizers" and said they could not afford to "retreat in the battle for land". The Commercial Farmers Union yesterday accused the government of leading an "apartheid" campaign against white farmers.

Two foreign journalists, Barry Bearak of the New York Times and a British reporter, arrested last week and charged with "illegally observing an election", were released on 300 million Zimbabwe dollars (£4) bail yesterday.