Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai Sign Zimbabwe Power-sharing Deal

Robert Mugabe and his rival Morgan Tsvangarai today signed an agreement intended to loosen the Zimbabwean president's grip on power.

The two met at the main Harare convention center in the presence of African leaders. The signing ceremony was preceded by speeches from the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, who helped broker the deal, and the king of Swaziland.

The power-sharing deal is meant as a prelude to western financial help for Zimbabwe's wrecked economy. Zimbabwe has by far the world's highest official inflation of 11 million per cent. Independent financial institutions put the real inflation figure closer to 40 million per cent and rising daily.

The EU welcomed the breakthrough today, but its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said officials would probably wait until next month to consider lifting sanctions. The EU wants to see whether Mugabe genuinely cedes power to the opposition.

Mbeki and Tsvangirai announced the deal late on Thursday. They gave no details, saying the agreement would be made public today.

Under the broad outlines of the deal, Tsvangirai would become prime minister and would chair a council of ministers that supervised the cabinet. Mugabe's Zanu-PF party would have 15 cabinet seats, Tsvangirai's MDC 13 and a splinter MDC faction three seats.

The opposition has demanded control of the police, while agreeing to allow Mugabe – who has been in power since independence in 1980 – to retain control of the military. Both the police and military have been blamed for state-orchestrated violence and torture of Mugabe's opponents.