Mugabe confident of election victory despite admitting vote losses

Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe says his party has lost ground to the opposition through complacency, but will win this weekend's presidential elections.

He told a campaign rally the opposition party is "a donkey being controlled by the British."

The fledgling Movement for Democratic Change won 57 of 120 elected seats in June 2000 parliamentary elections as Mugabe's popularity plunged amid economic chaos.

He told the rally: "We are now wide awake. "We won't let the (Movement for Democratic Change) win."

The President also thanked African leaders for refusing to buckle to pressure to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth of Britain and its former territories at a summit of the 54-nation grouping in Australia.

He said the decision to defer the possible suspension until Commonwealth observers report back on the election was "a victory against Britain's attempts to introduce a new form of apartheid" to serve Western interests in developing countries.

Tendai Biti, the MDC's foreign affairs spokesman, said President Mugabe was trying to hide his policies of violence and intimidation behind his rift with Britain.

"It is not a Zimbabwe-Britain crisis. Our people are being brutalized by fellow black Zimbabweans. This is the issue we would want our African brothers to have understood," he said.