Mugabe warns opposition must accept power-sharing

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has said the country's opposition MDC should accept a power-sharing deal signed last September…

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has said the country's opposition MDC should accept a power-sharing deal signed last September or end talks over the implementation of the agreement, state media reported today.

"This is the occasion when it's either they accept or it's a break. After all this is an interim agreement. If they have any issues they deem outstanding, they can raise them after they come into the inclusive government," Mugabe was quoted as saying in the weekly Sunday Mail.

Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change are set to hold meetings with the presidents of regional powers South Africa and Mozambique and with mediator Thabo Mbeki tomorrow, in a new regional push to break a deadlock in power-sharing talks.

Those talks will be followed by meetings between Zimbabwean negotiators on issues holding back the agreement on forming a unity government, South Africa's presidency said last week.

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But 84-year-old Mr Mugabe said his party had made all the concessions it was willing to make in the talks and was now ready to form the inclusive government as required by the September agreement.

"We have gone past negotiations and whatever concessions were there to be made have already been made. We have done all that SADC (Southern African Development Community) expected us to do and all that remains is fulfilling the agreement by forming an inclusive government," the paper quoted him as saying.