Zimbabwe to hold partial recount

President Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF lost its parliamentary majority

Zimbabwe's electoral commission has ordered a recount of ballots in 23 constituencies in last month's disputed elections, local media says.

The recount would be held on Saturday, the state-owned Sunday Mail reported.

The news came as southern African leaders, meeting in Zambia, called for still unpublished presidential poll results to be speedily announced.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders also urged all parties to accept the election results.

The chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, George Chiweshe, said the results from 22 districts had been disputed by the ruling Zanu-PF party, while the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) contested the count in one constituency.

Correspondents say the recount involves enough seats to overturn the original results, which gave the MDC a narrow lead in the lower house of parliament.

'Rigged'

The recount will be of all presidential, parliamentary, senate and council votes cast in the affected constituencies.

Elections at all those levels were held on 29 March, but the results of the presidential poll have not been released.

The MDC has claimed its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the presidency, beating incumbent Robert Mugabe.

This is a major improvement, SADC has acquitted itself fairly well Tendai Biti MDC

The MDC has also made it clear that it will not accept results based on recounts.

"For us, that is accepting rigged results," MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told Reuters news agency.

"They had custody of the ballot boxes for two weeks and they must have stuffed them with their votes."

According to results released so far, Zanu-PF has lost its majority in the House of Assembly for the first time since independence in 1980, winning 97 seats against the MDC's 99 in the 210-seat chamber. A smaller MDC faction has 10 seats.

In the Senate, or upper house, Zanu-PF and the combined opposition have 30 seats each.

Lusaka summit

Leaders from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC), ended nearly 13 hours of talks early on Sunday.

They had been holding an emergency summit in Zambia's capital, Lusaka, to try to resolve their neighbour's political deadlock - though Mr Mugabe did not attend.

The MDC says Morgan Tsvangirai won the presidential election outright

A joint declaration called for:

• Zimbabwe's election commission to speedily verify and publish the election results;
• all parties to accept the results;
• and for South African President Thabo Mbeki to continue his role as SADC's "facilitator on Zimbabwe".

A senior MDC official called on Mr Mbeki to show "more vigour, more openness and a complete abandonment of the policy of quiet diplomacy".

But Tendai Biti said he was satisfied with the outcome of the meeting.

"This is a major improvement, SADC has acquitted itself fairly well."

Mr Mbeki had met Mr Mugabe in Harare before the Lusaka summit, but could not convince him to attend the meeting

Instead, the Zimbabwean president sent a delegation of ministers.

A drawn-out economic collapse in Zimbabwe has seen hyper-inflation, massive unemployment and the departure of hundreds of thousands of people.

There is an unmistakeable sense that Zimbabwe is now a crisis for the entire region of southern Africa, says the BBC's Peter Biles at the summit in Lusaka.