Zimbabwe Opposition Leader Calls For Talks

Zimbabwe's opposition leader emerged briefly from his refuge at the Dutch Embassy on Wednesday to call on African leaders to guide negotiations to end the crisis in his country, saying a presidential runoff later this week was no solution.

Morgan Tsvangirai, who withdrew from Friday's runoff, also said Zimbabwe needs U.N. peacekeepers to help prepare the way for new elections.

Tsvangirai returned to the Dutch Embassy in Harare following a news conference, the Netherlands Foreign Ministry said, a measure of continuing tensions in the southern African country.

The leader of the Movement for Democratic Change opposition party said the goal of the talks he was proposing would be to form a coalition transitional authority in Zimbabwe.

He also said discussions could not begin until there was an end to attacks on his supporters, blamed on President Robert Mugabe's government. Tsvangirai also wants a release of "political prisoners," including the MDC's No. 2 official Tendai Biti, who has been jailed since earlier this month on treason charges that can carry the death penalty.

"What is important is that both parties must realize the country is burning and the only way is to sit down and find a way out of it," Tsvangirai told reporters at his home in Harare after leaving the embassy. He looked relaxed, smiling and joking often.

In a highly unusual move meant to show Britain's displeasure over alleged human rights abuses by Mugabe's administration, Queen Elizabeth stripped the Zimbabwean President of his honorary knighthood.

The Queen acted Wednesday on the advice of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

Miliband says Mugabe should have the honour revoked because of widespread violence and intimidation of Zimbabwe's opposition.

Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change opposition party, had fled to the Dutch Embassy on Sunday following the announcement of his withdrawal from the runoff. He sought refuge after getting a tip that soldiers were headed to his home. In the past three months, soldiers and armed gangs have killed dozens of Mugabe's opponents.

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric asked Tsvangirai in a phone interview Tuesday what he would say to his supporters who had seen his candidacy as a real possibility for change.

"My message is very, very simple. We went to an election in March. We had a relatively peaceful election and the people spoke. We won the parliamentary election, we won the presidential election. We want to thank our supporters for that support. What is happening at this runoff election is not an election," Tsvangirai said.

Mugabe, by all indications intent on extending his nearly three-decade rule, has grown only more defiant in the face of growing international pressure.

But Tsvangirai said "the election is not a solution. What is a solution is some sort of transitional process to address the critical issues facing the country.

"We are making proposals Mugabe has to accept."

While Tsvangirai did not spell out how the transitional body would work, he has insisted in the past that he lead, and Mugabe have no role in, any coalition.

Mugabe, though, is refusing to yield power. Tsvangirai's 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 official results said 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 from Britain in 1980 that Mugabe's ZANU-PF party failed to win a parliamentary majority.

Tsvangirai said he was asking the African Union, whose heads of state hold a regular summit in Egypt next week, to take over mediation, which so far has been in the hands of South African President Thabo Mbeki and a southern African regional group.

Tsvangirai had previously called on Mbeki to step aside, accusing him of bias in Mugabe's favor and saying his "quiet diplomacy" was not working.

Tsvangirai said the AU mediation he was proposing cannot "be a continuation of talks and talks about talks that have been largely fruitless for several years. The time for actions is now. The people and the country can wait no longer. We need to show leadership."

Earlier Wednesday, a commentary by Tsvangirai was published in the British newspaper The Guardian in which he called for U.N. peacekeepers to help prepare the way for new elections. Asked about that in Harare, Tsvangirai said: "What do you do when you don't have guns and the people are being brutalized out there?"

He stressed he was not calling for military intervention.

In The Guardian, Tsvangirai acknowledged 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."

"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 in The Guardian. "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."

On Wednesday, officials from Tsvangirai's party said police raided one of their provincial offices. Scores of opposition activists, including high-ranking party members, have been attacked or killed. The MDC's No. 2 official, Biti, has been jailed since earlier this month on treason charges - which can carry the death penalty.

"I have been arrested; I've been stopped at roadblocks," Tsvangirai told Couric on Tuesday. "I have been treated like a common criminal ... and not as a leading contender in this campaign."

In an interview with Al Jazeera television, Tsvangirai said of the violence: "This is not an election. This is war."

He said he could not have participated in the runoff because of the attacks and restrictions on his campaigning, which included police regularly blocking his attempts to hold rallies or meet even small groups of voters.

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 Mbeki, who was appointed by the bloc more than a year ago to mediate between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

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.

South African 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.

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.

South African officials have offered no details of Mbeki's mediation agenda. Pahad 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 South Africa's 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 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."