Regional leaders meet to tackle Zimbabwe crisis

PRETORIA (Reuters) - Regional leaders will push Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the opposition at a summit on Monday to implement a power-sharing deal and save the country from economic collapse.

Mugabe will seek approval at the meeting in South Africa to form a government with or without his rivals.

The veteran leader and Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), signed the agreement in September but have failed to agree on control of cabinet posts, with neither side showing any sign of compromise.

Mugabe, in power since 1980, and his ZANU-PF party have urged the opposition to join a unity government but say they will not hesitate to form one without them.

Western leaders want Mugabe to step down and are pushing for a democratic government to embrace economic reforms before billions of dollars in aid is offered but he has remained defiant through several rounds of negotiations.

In Brussels, the European Union stepped up pressure on him on Monday by adding individuals and firms to a sanctions list and calling for a probe into Harare's diamond industry, EU officials in Brussels said.

The bloc added 27 individuals and 36 companies to the list of banned allies of Mugabe because of their links to suspected human rights abuses, the officials said. Mugabe's ZANU-PF has denied allegations of abuses.

A deputy minister billed Monday's summit as the last chance for rescuing the power-sharing pact, viewed as the best hope for averting total collapse in Zimbabwe, where prices double every day and cholera has killed nearly 2,800 people.

"The way forward soon after this summit, whether there is an agreement or there is no agreement, President Mugabe is going to form a cabinet," deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga told South African public broadcaster SAFM radio. "He will obviously try to leave room for Tsvangirai so that whenever he changes his mind, but that is not going to be for too long," he said.

The 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit hosted by South African President Kgalema Motlanthe hopes to break the impasse as Zimbabwe heads towards economic breakdown and grapples with a humanitarian crisis.

DIPLOMATIC APPROACH

Zambia and Botswana have taken tough lines but other countries in the bloc favour a more diplomatic approach with Mugabe, who they still revere as a liberation hero.

Botswana's President Seretse Khama Ian Khama, one of Mugabe's toughest critics, will attend the summit after boycotting one in August.

"The summit offers President Ian Khama an opportunity to face Zimbabwe's president and leader of ZANU-PF, Robert Mugabe and tell him to his face that he has failed the people of Zimbabwe," Botswana's leading daily newspaper Mmegi said on its website.

Tsvangirai says ZANU-PF is trying to sideline him and wants control of powerful ministries such as Home Affairs. He says no deal is possible unless party activists are released from jail.

Mugabe has accused the MDC of working with Western powers to oust him.

Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper reported that Mugabe met with Tsvangirai last Thursday and the MDC leader again refused to finalise the power-sharing agreement.

Tsvangirai reportedly told Mugabe that he was under pressure from hard-liners not to join a government, said the Herald.

"President Mugabe told him that he could outflank those putting him under pressure to make an independent decision and accompany him across the road to State House to be sworn in as prime minister," it said.

Without a political settlement, it is unlikely sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by Western countries will be lifted.

Zimbabwe, ravaged by the world's highest rate of inflation, severe food and fuel shortages and a virtually worthless economy, faces Africa's biggest cholera epidemic in a decade. The water-borne disease has killed nearly 2,800 people since it broke out in August.

The epidemic could top 60,000 cases this week, U.N. figures showed on Friday.

(Writing by Michael Georgy)