By Nelson Banya
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean police on Friday detainedopposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for the second time thisweek after blocking him from reaching a campaign rally for theJune 27 presidential run-off vote.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change accusesPresident Robert Mugabe of trying to sabotage Tsvangirai'scampaign in order to preserve his 28-year hold on power.
Tsvangirai was released a few hours after being stopped byarmed police and told to go to the police station at Esigodini,40 km (25 miles) southeast of Zimbabwe's second largest cityBulawayo.
The party called Tsvangirai's detention "a shameless anddesperate act". It said police had banned several plannedcampaign rallies because authorities could not guarantee thesafety of party leaders.
"The regime must let the president do that which the peopleof Zimbabwe have mandated him and the MDC, to help restore thedignity of the people of Zimbabwe," it said in a statement.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena blamed the opposition forthe incident on Friday.
"They refused to stop at a roadblock. They just crashedthrough the roadblock, led by their MP-elect in the area," hesaid.
Tsvangirai, who beat Mugabe in a March 29 election butfailed to win the majority needed to avoid a second ballot, wasdetained on Wednesday and held and questioned by police foreight hours.
On Thursday, police stopped and held five U.S. and twoBritish diplomats for several hours after they visited victimsof political violence. Zimbabwe also barred relief agenciesfrom doing work in the country, suffering economic ruin.
"It is almost as if the regime is sending out a message tothe region, to the international community that it doesn'tcare, that it has no respect for life, it has no respect forthe rule of law," MDC secretary general Tendai Biti told theWorld Economic Forum for Africa in Cape Town.
"The regime is increasing the decibels of insanity."
DIPLOMATIC ROW
Washington blamed the diplomats' detention firmly onMugabe's government. The United States and former colonialpower Britain accuse it of trying to intimidate Tsvangirai'ssupporters ahead of the election.
The opposition says 65 people have been killed in violencesince the first round of voting. Mugabe says the opposition isresponsible.
U.S. Ambassador James McGee, who was among those detainedon Thursday, will lodge an official complaint in a meeting withZimbabwe's foreign ministry, the U.S. embassy in Harare said onFriday. It was not clear when the meeting would take place.
Zimbabwean police said the diplomats had triggered theincident by failing to identify themselves when they werestopped at Chipadze outside the capital.
Mugabe's government suspended the work of all internationalaid agencies in the southern African nation on Thursday, sayingsome of them were campaigning for the opposition. Britain andthe European Union condemned the suspension.
"I am deeply distressed to think that hundreds of thousandsof people who depend on aid from the European Commission andothers for their very survival now face an even more uncertainfuture," said EU aid commissioner Louis Michel, demanding theimmediate lifting of the ban.
Zimbabwe, once one of Africa's most prosperous countries,has seen food production plummet since 2000 when Mugabe'sgovernment began seizing thousands of white-owned farms as partof a land redistribution programme to help poor blacks.
Many of the farms have ended up in the hands of Mugabeloyalists, and the country now faces chronic food shortages. Ithas had to rely on handouts and imports to feed its people.
Mugabe blames sanctions imposed by Western countries forthe collapse of the once prosperous economy. The oppositionsays he ruined Zimbabwe through mismanagement.
The Southern African Development Community, a regionalgrouping of 14 nations, including Zimbabwe, is sendingobservers to monitor the run-off.
(Additional reporting by Wendell Roelf in Cape Town andKatherine Baldwin in London; Writing by Marius Bosch; Editingby Paul Simao and Matthew Tostevin)