Mugabe set for second leadership ballott

Embattled Robert Mugabe is to run in a second round of voting for the leadership of Zimbabwe.

Top members of his ZANU-PF party met and announced they would support him in the run-off against opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai - confirmation that they have accepted Mugabe did not win Saturday's first ballot outright.

The official results have still to be declared, but independent observers estimate that although Mr Tsvangirai polled the most votes he did not have enough for an outright victory.

Didymus Mutasa, secretary of Mugabe's party as well as a minister in his cabinet, announced there would definitely be a run-off.

Mugabe's supporters also revealed they would lodge objections to the results in 16 of the seats in the separate parliamentary elections where they lost their overall majority.

They claimed the opposition bribed electoral officials. If successful, ZANU-PF would win back control of the parliament.

In another demonstration of support for Mugabe's re-run in the presidential vote, veterans of Zimbabwe's guerrilla war for independence marched through the capital Harare in a gesture of intimidation against his political opponents.

Meanwhile offices of Mr Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were ransacked and police detained foreign journalists.

Earlier police escorted about 400 war veterans as they paraded silently through Harare. The feared veterans in the bush war that helped end white minority rule, who often are used to intimidate opposition supporters and spearheaded the often violent takeover of white farms in recent years, appeared to have been transported to town.

The MDC remained defiant however, saying it was ready to go to court to force the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to release the official results, pointing out by law all the results have to be revealed within a week of the vote.

"So we want to see results by today. If that doesn't happen then we will retrieve all our tools including court process to make sure we give Zimbabweans the results as soon as possible," said a spokesman.

The law requires a run-off within 21 days of the first round. But diplomats in Harare and at the United Nations feared Mugabe would try for a much longer period to give security forces time to clamp down.

"Mugabe has started a crackdown," MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti said.

He said rooms used as offices by the party at a Harare hotel were ransacked by intruders he believed were either police or agents of the feared Central Intelligence Organisation.

Mr Biti said Tsvangirai was "safe" but had cancelled plans for a news conference.

Mr Tsvangirai tried earlier to reassure security chiefs who vowed a week ago not to serve anyone but Mugabe, according to a close source.

But an agreed meeting with seven generals was cancelled when the officers said that they had been ordered not to attend and that they would be under surveillance.

There have been reports of rifts within the highly politicised upper echelons of Zimbabwe's security forces.

The journalists, meanwhile, were detained by heavily armed riot police who took them from their hotel.

Mugabe has ruled since his guerrilla army helped force an end to white minority rule and bring about an independent Zimbabwe in 1980. His popularity has been battered by an economic freefall that followed the often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms in 2000.