Presidential election - Robert Mugabe - Tsvangirai - Zimbabwe

'Assassination plot' delays Tsvangirai's return

Saturday 17 May 2008

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai postponed his long-awaited homecoming to contest a presidential run-off after his party said it discovered an assassination plot against him. A. Duval Smith reports from South Africa.

Special Report Struggle for leadership in Zimbabwe

Saturday 17 May 2008

By Reuters

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Saturday postponed his expected return home to contest an election run-off after his party said it had discovered an assassination plot against him.

Movement for Democratic Change leader Tsvangirai has been out of Zimbabwe for more than a month and had been due to return from Europe on Saturday to campaign for the June 27 second round ballot against President Robert Mugabe.

"We have received information from a credible source concerning a planned assassination attempt against President Tsvangirai. We are not in a position to say whether this threat concerns the actions of the state or a non-state actor," spokesman George Sibotshiwe told Reuters.

"In light of this information, and on the strong recommendation of Mr Tsvangirai's security adviser, it has been decided that the president will not return to Zimbabwe today," he said from neighbouring South Africa, where he said Tsvangirai also was.

No one was immediately available for comment from the government or the police on the party's plot allegation.

Sibotshiwe said the MDC was holding consultations "at a very high level" within the regional Southern African Development Community group over the issue, and that Tsvangirai was keen to return home as soon as possible.

Tsvangirai won the first round on March 29, but not by enough votes to avoid a second round against Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for nearly three decades.

The March elections were followed by widespread violence, which the MDC says left at least 40 of its supporters dead and scores of others injured. It accuses Mugabe's ZANU-PF party of a campaign of intimidation. ZANU-PF blames the opposition for the violence.

ZANU-PF lost control of parliament in the March elections for the first time since independence in 1980.

MUGABE CHARGES HOSTILE AXIS

Mugabe told a party conference on Friday the result had been "disastrous", and vowed he would not lose power to an opposition he said was backed by "a hostile axis of powerful foreign governments" and Western imperialists.

Zimbabweans hope the June poll will help end political and economic turmoil which has brought 165,000 percent inflation, 80 percent unemployment, chronic food and fuel shortages and sent a flood of refugees to neighbouring countries.

Earlier on Saturday, MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said an MDC rally scheduled in Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo on Sunday would go ahead, but would not say whether Tsvangirai would be back in the country in time to address it.

The opposition scored a small victory on Friday when a court ordered police not to interfere with the rally, which the force had banned.

State media on Saturday quoted Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi as saying Zimbabwe would not invite any new foreign observers for the presidential run-off and that only those who monitored the March 29 poll could return.

"We have already invited observers. The invitations we sent at the beginning are still valid," Mumbengegwi told the Herald newspaper. "There would be no further invitations."

Tsvangirai had previously called for unrestricted access for international observers to the poll, but told Reuters this week that he would contest the vote even if only regional observers could be present, as in the March election.

On his return home, Tsvangirai was expected to brief opposition members of parliament on his tour of Africa and Europe and to underline their role in control of the legislature.

Tsvangirai said on Friday he would take part in the fresh vote, but told reporters at a conference in Belfast that violence had to end.