Mugabe asks Tsvangirai to take up PM post

BINDURA, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe announced on Friday he had invited rival Morgan Tsvangirai to be sworn-in as prime minister in a shared government, but expressed doubt whether he would accept.

Opposition leader Tsvangirai, meanwhile, threatened to ask for a suspension of power-sharing talks if the government did not stop what he called the persecution of political opponents.

The deadlock between the two has held up any chance of ending the spiralling crisis in the southern African country, where a spreading cholera epidemic has killed more than 1,100 people and food and fuel are in short supply.

Mugabe told supporters he had sent letters to Tsvangirai inviting him to be sworn in as prime minister but expressed doubt that a breakthrough could be reached.

"I have sent letters so that they can come and I can swear (in) and appoint them. We have not reached a stage where we can say with a degree of certainty that they want to be part of this," Mugabe said.

But Tsvangirai's opposition Movement for Democratic Change said that it had not received any letters.

Tsvangirai has long accused Mugabe of trying to sideline the opposition to a minor role in a coalition government. Deadlock on implementing their September power-sharing agreement has centred on control of key cabinet posts.

THREAT

The opposition leader said on Friday negotiations were endangered by what he called a wave of abductions of MDC supporters. The MDC blames Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.

"If these abductions do not cease immediately, and if all the abductees are not released or charged in a court of law by January 1, 2009, I will be asking the MDC's National Council to pass a resolution to suspend all negotiations and contact with ZANU-PF," Tsvangirai said in a news conference in Gaborone.

Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in a March presidential election but without an absolute majority. He pulled out of the run-off in June, saying scores of his supporters had been killed.

His threat to suspend talks came amid growing international concerns over the spread of a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe and renewed calls from Western countries and some African leaders for Mugabe, 84, to step down.

The United Nations said the death toll from cholera had risen to 1,123 and that 20,896 people had been infected with the easily preventable and treatable disease as of Thursday.

"I believe the situation, contrary to what President Mugabe says, from all the evidence we have is deteriorating and deteriorating rapidly," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a news conference in London.

The government has accused former colonial power Britain and the United States of trying to exploit the cholera epidemic to end Mugabe's 28-year rule.

Botswana's foreign minister and Kenya's prime minister are among those in Africa who have called for military intervention.

Mugabe, however, said African nations lacked the courage to use troops to remove his government.

"How could African leaders ever topple Robert Mugabe, organise an army to come? It is not easy," the state-run Herald newspaper quoted Mugabe as saying in a meeting on Thursday with the ZANU-PF central committee.

"I do not know of any African country that is brave enough to do that."

(Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe)