By Nelson Banya
HARARE (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe will snub aregional summit at the weekend that will discuss fears ofbloodshed in Zimbabwe because of delayed election results.
As tension rose over the delay, Zimbabwe police accused theopposition Movement for Democratic Change of "spoiling for afight" and of deploying 350 youth wing members around thecountry.
The police banned a Sunday rally by the MDC, which hascalled a general strike for next Tuesday to push for results tobe released.
State radio said Zimbabwe would be represented by threeministers at the Saturday summit of the Southern AfricanDevelopment Community (SADC), which was expected to pressureMugabe to issue results from the March 29 vote.
Mugabe's decision not to attend was a direct snub toZambian President Levy Mwanawasa, the SADC chairman, who calledthe meeting.
Mwanawasa last year described Zimbabwe as a "sinkingTitanic" before getting back in line behind the body's softlyapproach to Mugabe.
Earlier, Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga hadsaid Harare was not consulted before the summit was called.
State radio said demands for Mugabe to release the resultswere misplaced because that was the prerogative of the ZimbabweElectoral Commission.
Human rights organisations and the opposition Movement forDemocratic Change say Mugabe has unleashed a campaign ofsystematic violence in response to his ZANU-PF party's firstelectoral defeat, when it lost control of parliament in theMarch 29 election.
The MDC says its leader Morgan Tsvangirai won a parallelpresidential vote, whose results have not been announced, andMugabe's 28-year rule is over.
It accuses Mugabe of delaying the result so that he canintimidate opposition supporters before a runoff vote againstTsvangirai.
Zimbabwean police said all political rallies had beenbanned because officers were too busy guarding ballot boxes ordeployed to prevent post-election violence.
(Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe, StellaMapenzauswa, Cris Chinaka, Muchena Zigomo and Paul Simao;writing by Barry Moody; editing by Matthew Tostevin)
