Mugabe warns of bush war if he loses election

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe said yesterday liberation war veterans would take up arms if he loses a June 27 presidential run-off vote.

Mr Mugabe told youth members of his ruling Zanu-PF party in Harare that the veterans had told him they would launch a new bush war if the election was won by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, whom he accuses of being a puppet of the West.

"They said if this country goes back into white hands just because we have used a pen (to vote), 'we will return to the bush to fight'," Mr Mugabe said, in the latest ratcheting up of pressure to extend his 28-year presidency.

Mr Tsvangirai, rights groups and Western powers accuse Mr Mugabe of unleashing a brutal campaign, using the police to harass the opposition, in a bid to win the run-off after he lost presidential and parliamentary elections on March 29.

Mr Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), fell short of the majority needed to win the presidency outright in that vote. He says 66 of his followers have been murdered since.

Zimbabwe's High Court yesterday ordered police to bring MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti to court today and justify why he had been arrested at Harare's airport on Thursday. Mr Biti faces a treason charge that could carry a death sentence.

"The order we got is for him to be brought to court and for the police to show why they are holding him," defence attorney Lewis Uriri said. He said Mr Biti was expected to appear in court at 0800 GMT today.

Former guerilla commander Mr Mugabe, President since independence from Britain in 1980, blames the MDC for the violence which has caused widespread international concern.

"We cannot allow the British to dominate us here again through their puppets. You saw what they were saying (after the March elections), celebrating an MDC victory," the 84-year-old ruler said yesterday.

"These were the whites we took farms from."

The war veterans, usually acting alongside the Zanu-PF youth militia, have regularly been used to intimidate Mr Mugabe's opponents and were involved in implementing the government's seizure of thousands of white-owned farms beginning in 2000.

Some of the seized land was given to the veterans.

Earlier, the MDC said Zimbabwean police impounded two campaign buses used by Mr Tsvangirai in the latest action against the opposition leader in the election campaign.

Mr Tsvangirai, who has been detained four times in the past week and has had his own vehicle confiscated, would continue the campaign, MDC spokesman George Sibotshiwe said.

The Southern African Development Community, a grouping of 14 nations including Zimbabwe, has sent a team of election monitors to Harare. Observers from Western nations critical of Mr Mugabe's government are not being allowed into the country.

Zimbabwe's agricultural sector, once one of the most prosperous in Africa, has collapsed, and shortages of bread, milk and meat are common. Inflation is running at 165,000 per cent and unemployment is 80 per cent.