Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has said he is ready to meet opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai over the country's deepening crisis if the opposition recognises his disputed re-election in March last year.
But Tsvangirai, who is on trial on charges of plotting to assassinate Mugabe before the election, on Tuesday rejected any deal and said his Movement for Democratic Change would press on with its challenge to the legality of Mugabe's re-election.
Zimbabwe has plunged deeper into crisis in the past year, its widening political rift accompanied by soaring unemployment and severe shortages of food, fuel and foreign exchange which many blame on Mugabe's policies.
Mugabe's remarks, in an interview with state television aired on Monday night, included a rare hint at retirement when he said he wanted an open debate on the choice of his successor as head of the ruling ZANU-PF party.
Asked whether he would meet Tsvangirai to discuss Zimbabwe's mounting problems Mugabe, 79, said ZANU-PF had held talks with the opposition last year but withdrew after the MDC insisted Mugabe's re-election was not legitimate.
"Is Mr Tsvangirai prepared to recognise me before I can get to meet with him? He doesn't accept I am president of the country...and you have to accept the reality that Mugabe is not only the president of the party (ZANU-PF) but of the country," he said.
"I was elected constitutionally and the election results were declared valid by countless observer teams," he added.
Observers from South Africa, Namibia and Nigeria said the poll was legitimate, but Commonwealth observers and a group of southern African parliamentarians said the vote was flawed and the Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe as a result.
Tsvangirai, replying to Mugabe's remarks, told reporters "We have not changed our position. We remain committed to pressing our legal challenge which is our legal right." The MDC has said in the past it would meet Mugabe only to discuss fresh polls.
Amid deepening economic problems, Zimbabwe's main labour movement has called a three-day national strike starting on Wednesday to protest a sharp increase in fuel prices.
Labour officials yesterday said three provincial officials of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) had been detained for several hours for distributing flyers promoting Wednesday's strike, but were later released.
The police have declared the strike illegal, but police officials were not available to comment on the arrests.
Last month the MDC staged a two-day strike that shut down about 80 percent of businesses and industries in one of the biggest protests against Mugabe's rule. Hundreds of MDC officials were arrested in the security crackdown that followed.
Mugabe, in power ever since the former Rhodesia gained independence in 1980, says the economy has been sabotaged by domestic and Western opponents of his campaign to seize white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
Asked about retirement, Mugabe said he had always wanted to sort out the land issue before "getting to a stage where you say - fine, we have settled this matter and people can retire."
On a successor, he said: "We would encourage open debate (within ZANU-PF) rather than meetings endowed in secrecy."
The government has said the land campaign is largely over, but it has launched an audit of how it was carried out after reports that some ministers had grabbed most of the best land for themselves.
Mugabe said he was ready to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he has accused of sponsoring the MDC and who is one of his severest critics.
"The problems don't go away unless you discuss them but Blair is a man who thinks everything he says is right. He is a little bully," he said. "I am ready to discuss if he is ready to discuss our situation with him."