Tsvangirai appeals for UN intervention in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai appealed to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday for the world body and the African Union to intervene in his country's post-election crisis.

Tsvangirai held talks with Ban for around half an hour on the sidelines of a U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting in Ghana's capital, Accra.

"He appealed for an intervention by the African Union and the United Nations since he feels there is no progress in the efforts made by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)," Michel Montas, Ban's spokeswoman, said in New York.

She said Ban had again called on the authorities to release the results of the country's disputed March 29 elections.

"He appealed once more for the release of the electoral results as soon as possible and said that he would consult the president of the African Union (AU) on possible ways forward," Montas told reporters at U.N. headquarters.

A joint AU-U.N. mission to Zimbabwe was proposed at last week's AU-U.N. Security Council summit in New York, but Ban said he would have to discuss any specific measures with the AU.

Zimbabwe's opposition says Tsvangirai won last month's presidential polls and that President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled since independence in 1980, is attempting to cling to power by delaying declaring the results.

Zimbabwe also announced a delay on Sunday in a partial recount of the votes in a parallel parliamentary election, extending a deadlock in which the opposition says 10 of its members have been killed and hundreds arrested.


'STEALING' THE ELECTION

The recount could overturn the parliamentary results, which showed Mugabe's ZANU-PF losing its majority to Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for the first time.

African leaders have come under international pressure to take strong action to help resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe, a once prosperous nation whose economy is in ruins, beset with 165,000 percent inflation and mass unemployment.

Former colonial power Britain accused Mugabe of trying to steal the election and urged African leaders to do more to help resolve the dispute, saying democratic legitimacy throughout the continent was at stake.

SADC and the African Union have called for the results of the presidential election to be released but Thabo Mbeki, president of regional power South Africa, and other African leaders have faced accusations of being too soft over the issue.