WRAPUP 1-Zimbabwe's Tsvangirai urges isolation, peacekeepers

* Tsvangirai urges U.N. to isolate Mugabe

* Opposition leader says peacekeepers needed

* U.S. calls on U.N. and SADC to act

By Ralph Gowling

LONDON, June 25 (Reuters) - Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai urged the United Nations on Wednesday to isolate President Robert Mugabe and said a peacekeeping force was needed in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe has shrugged off Monday's unprecedented and unanimous decision by the U.N. Security Council to condemn violence against the opposition and declare that a free and fair presidential election on Friday was impossible.

Tsvangirai, who has withdrawn from the election and taken refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare since Sunday, said Zimbabwe would "break" if the world did not come to its aid.

"We ask for the U.N. to go further than its recent resolution, condemning the violence in Zimbabwe, to encompass an active isolation of the dictator Mugabe," Tsvangirai wrote in an article in Britain's Guardian newspaper.

"For this we need a force to protect the people. We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force," said Tsvangirai.

"Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not trouble-makers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns."

Pressure has mounted on Mugabe from both inside and outside Africa to resolve Zimbabwe's political turmoil and economic meltdown, blamed by the West and the opposition on the 84-year-old president who has held power for 28 years.

U.S. CALL

The United States has urged the leading regional body, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), to declare both the election and Mugabe's government illegitimate.

Angola's state-run ANGOP news agency quoted SADC executive secretary Tomaz Salomao as saying foreign ministers agreed at a meeting on Monday that a "climate of extreme violence" existed in Zimbabwe and that the government must protect the people.