Africans urge Zimbabwe poll delay


President Robert Mugabe has vowed to go ahead with Friday's vote


An emergency summit of southern African leaders has called for Zimbabwe's run-off presidential election to be postponed because of recent violence.
The governments of Swaziland Tanzania and Angola said conditions would not permit a free and fair election.
Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai earlier urged intervention by the African Union and southern African states to end the crisis.
Britain is also to withdraw President Robert Mugabe's honorary knighthood.
Mr Mugabe is the first foreigner to be stripped of an honorary knighthood since Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 the day before his execution.
Time for action
The summit of southern African leaders urged the two sides to hold talks aimed at finding a compromise.
The time for actions is now the people and the country can wait no longer - we need to show leadership


Morgan Tsvangirai



The statement followed a day-long meeting in the Swazi capital Mbabane of the three countries from the regional Southern African Development Community (Sadc) responsible for overseeing peace and security in the region.
The statement follows an appeal by Mr Tsvangirai who heads the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for African leaders to help resolve Zimbabwe's crisis.
"I am asking the AU [African Union] and Sadc to lead an expanded initiative supported by the UN to manage what I will call a transitional process" he said at a news conference in Harare.
Dismissing Friday's planned election as pointless he said Zimbabwe should work out a political settlement based on genuine and honest dialogue.
He also listed four aaa demands that he described as a way out of the crisis.

• Violence must stop immediately - so-called war veterans and youth militias should return home and checkpoints be removed
• Humanitarian assistance must be allowed into the country
• All members of parliament elected on 29 March must be sworn in
• All political prisoners including the MDC secretary general must be released immediately

He said the details of his proposals would need to be hammered out through negotiations.
While campaigning on Tuesday Mr Mugabe said his government was open to negotiations with "anyone" but only after the elections.

The government and Zimbabwe's election authority insist Friday's vote will go ahead because Mr Tsvangirai's withdrawal came too late to prevent his name appearing on the ballot paper and was therefore invalid. Mr Mugabe officially came second to Mr Tsvangirai in the first round in March. The governing Zanu-PF party led by Mr Mugabe also lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence in 1980.