Zimbabwe's Mugabe Hints At Early Elections

President Robert Mugabe hinted at early elections Saturday, saying his party should be preparing to avoid a repeat of his loss in March.

Mugabe spoke Saturday at the close of a two-day conference of his ZANU-PF party. He told about 5,000 party loyalists new elections would be held if a power-sharing plan collapsed.

The unity government agreement Mugabe signed in September with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has stalled in a dispute over which party should control key Cabinet posts. And recent violence has left many wondering whether the plan is workable.

The political impasse has left Zimbabweans virtually leaderless as they suffer economic and humanitarian crises.

Independent human rights groups have accused Mugabe's regime of stepping up attacks on dissidents in recent weeks.

Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said Friday that he will ask his party to halt power-sharing negotiations unless political detainees are released or charged by Jan. 1.

"The MDC can no longer sit at the same negotiating table with a party that is abducting our members and other innocent civilians and refusing to produce any of them before a court of law," Tsvangirai said.

The MDC also has proposed new elections as the only way to resolve the standoff, but only under international supervision, a condition Mugabe is unlikely to accept.

The 84-year-old Mugabe, who has ruled the country since independence from Britain in 1980, lost March presidential elections to Tsvangirai. Official results said Tsvangirai did not win enough presidential votes to avoid a runoff. Tsvangirai withdrew from the runoff, held in June and widely denounced as neither free not fair, because of state-sponsored violence against his supporters.

In his speech Saturday, Mugabe said veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war to whom he had given farms came to him after the March vote, fearful land reform would be reversed.

"I told them go and organize and make a program for the June elections. Which they did," he said, calling for similar mobilization if early elections were called.

"We mustn't be caught unawares this time," he said.

He also said he had no intention of stepping down. He noted U.S. President George W. Bush, long among his sharpest critics, was stepping down after two terms. He also predicted British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, another critic, would soon be toppled.

"They are all going to their political graves," Mugabe said. "But I will remain the president of this country."

Mugabe had opened his party meeting Friday by declaring "Zimbabwe is mine," saying only Zimbabweans can remove him from power and that no African nation is brave enough to wrest it from him.

Critics blame Zimbabwe's collapse on Mugabe's policies, including an often violent land reform campaign dating from 2000 that saw farms go to his cronies instead of the poor blacks he has championed. Mugabe blames Western sanctions for the economic meltdown, though the European Union and U.S. sanctions are targeted only at Mugabe and dozens of his top aides with frozen bank accounts and travel bans.

Mugabe has faced renewed criticism because of the humanitarian crisis that has pushed thousands of Zimbabweans to the point of starvation and left more than 1,000 dead from cholera since August.
By Associated Press Writer ANGUS SHAW