Mugabe and Tsvangirai Meet, No Truce Yet

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai have met for the first time since Tsvangirai suspended his participation in their joint government ten days ago - but failed to resolve their differences.

Nelson Chamisa, the spokesman for Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said the two leaders were ‘worlds apart’ on fundamental issues and the four-hour meeting could not yield a truce.

President Mugabe’s spokesman meanwhile described the meeting as a ‘normal meeting.’

The MDC is now awaiting upcoming mediation talks convened by regional countries in Harare next week, but say they will start preparing for fresh elections if the talks fail.

On October 16, Tsvangirai announced he was suspending his participation in the government because President Mugabe’s ZANU-PF had failed to honour the country’s power-sharing deal.

His decision was also fired up by the re-detention of top MDC official Roy Bennett on terrorism charges.

A recent police raid on the MDC’s offices, supposedly in search of illegal weapons, was also seen as an act of intimidation and is likely to have widened the drift between the two principals.

South African leader Jacob Zuma has said Zimbabwe should not be left to revert to instability, and has declared his full support for the full implementation of the Global Political Agreement that brought Tsvangirai and Mugabe into a shared unity government following disputed elections in 2008. [ER].