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Pressure on Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe to step down

US backs change in Zim after elections

Harare - US President George W Bush piled the pressure on Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe to step down on Tuesday, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned of “a serious humanitarian crisis” in the country.

"The will of the people needs to be respected in Zimbabwe,” Bush told a White House press conference as the UN Security Council prepared to discuss the month-long election turmoil in the troubled southern African nation.

Bush said it was clear that the people of Zimbabwe had voted for change in the March 29 parliamentary and presidential elections “because their president has failed the country” after 28 years in power.

Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe ever since independence from Britain and is a hero of Africa’s national liberation movements but he has presided over a spiralling economic crisis that has impoverished his once-prosperous nation.

Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party has lost control of parliament for the first time since 1980 to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai has also claimed victory in the presidential vote.

No official result has yet been issued from the presidential election.

“The Zimbabwe government has not released presidential results after four weeks. We know who is the winner. The authorities and president should release the results immediately,” Ban said at a forum in Geneva on Tuesday.

“Because of the increasing violence and the number of displaced people fleeing their homes to other places, there is a serious humanitarian crisis.”

European Union foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg also upped the pressure on Zimbabwe, calling for a global arms embargo after an outcry last week prevented a Chinese shipment of weapons from reaching the country.

Zimbabwe’s main human rights group meanwhile accused the government of using violence to help Mugabe cling to power by forcing supporters of the opposition to flee from their constituencies ahead of a possible second round of voting.

“What we are witnessing constitutes a form of rigging,” Kucaca Phulu, chairperson of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (Zimrights), said at a press conference in Harare where tearful victims of violence recounted their ordeal.

“I lost everything, everything except these clothes I am wearing now,” said Cecilia Mhungu, 26, an opposition activist who told reporters she was beaten over the head with an iron rod by Zanu-PF supporters who burnt her home down.

Having fled to Harare, Mhungu was then among the 215 opposition supporters rounded up by armed riot police at the opposition MDC headquarters on Friday.

She and almost all of the other detainees have since been released.

Zimrights said at least 10 people have been killed in the post-election violence and hundreds forced to flee their homes. Doctors say they have treated hundreds of injuries from beatings since the polls.

In Geneva, senior UN experts said they were increasingly concerned about “organised and coordinated” attacks on supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change or people suspected of having voted for it.

Mugabe’s chief spokesman George Charamba released a statement on Tuesday in which he accused the opposition of deliberately stirring up tensions and warned the regime would crack down on violence and prevent “anarchy”.

In an apparent offer of reconciliation, however, Boniface Chidyausiku, Zimbabwe’s UN ambassador, told the BBC that any eventual winner of last month’s presidential election should include opponents in a power-sharing deal.

“Whoever wins the presidency has to come up with a government of national unity,” Chidyausiku said, echoing a call in the state-run Herald newspaper last week for a national unity government to be led by Mugabe.

“There is no way anybody can do without the other,” he added.

But deputy information minister Bright Matonga ruled out any coalition with MDC leader Tsvangirai, telling AFP he was a “sell-out” and “an agent” of Britain, Zimbabwe’s former colonial master.

Based on the MDC’s own calculations, 56-year-old Tsvangirai has declared himself the outright winner without the need for a run-off against the increasingly isolated 84-year-old Mugabe.

However, government supporters say that no candidate won more than 50 percent and that a second round is inevitable.

An independent election monitoring group, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, estimates Tsvangirai won 49,4 percent and Mugabe 41,8 percent.

Electoral officials are due to meet with the candidates or their representatives on Thursday to discuss the election results, with a final outcome to be announced only if the different sides agree on the figures. - Sapa-AFP