Mugabe threatens to arrest rivals, ignore election results

Robert Mugabe has threatened to arrest opposition leaders he accused of supporting mounting election violence, Zimbabwean state radio reported.

Campaigning in the central Kadoma district yesterday, Mugabe said Morgan Tsvangirai and other leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change were condoning "arson and violence across the country".

Mugabe's comments were followed today by the publication in the state-controlled Herald newspaper of a vow from the president not to cede power whatever the result of the run-off election.

The 84-year-old Zimbabwean leader told the paper: "We shed a lot of blood for this country. We are not going to give up our country for a mere X on a ballot. How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun?"

An MDC spokesman responded by throwing the charge of reposnsibility for the violence back at the president.

"He is the one who has gone about threatening to go back to war if he loses," Nelson Chamisa said. "So while he is accusing us of violence, he is responsible."

Though Mugabe blames the opposition for the upsurge in violence, the UN has said the president's supporters are to blame for the bulk of it.

The MDC says more than 60 of its supporters have been killed in a campaign of intimidation since the first-round election on March 29.

Tsvangirai won the first round presidential poll but did not win enough votes for an outright victory, forcing the run-off.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has said that 400 election observers are to be sent to Zimbabwe for the presidential run-off to ensure a fair vote.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, yesterday warned that international election observers must be allowed to monitor the run-off or risk having Mugabe's regime hijack the election.

"[Mugabe's] criminal cabal ... threatens to make a mockery of free and fair elections in Zimbabwe," Brown said.