Zimbabwe commission to recount election votes

HARARE (Reuters) - The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission will recount votes cast in the country's March 29 election next Saturday, a state newspaper reported on Sunday.

The Sunday Mail quoted Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairman Justice George Chiweshe as saying the ballots would be counted again in the presence of party representatives, candidates and election observers.

"All votes that were cast in the presidential, House of Assembly, Senate and council elections will be recounted on Saturday this week," said Chiweshe.

But the newspaper referred specifically to 23 constituencies and it was not clear from the article whether all or only some of the results would be recounted. Electoral officials were not immediately available for comment.

The bombshell announcement came as regional leaders met in Zambia to discuss a two-week delay in releasing results of the presidential election that has raised fears of violence.

The recount could overturn the already announced victory by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the parliamentary vote.

The MDC says its leader Morgan Tsvangirai also won the presidential vote according to tallies taken from results posted at polling stations, and that the 28-year rule of President Robert Mugabe is over.

The recount was likely to increase tension in Zimbabwe over the delay, as the MDC has accused Mugabe of trying to intimidate its supporters with a systematic campaign of violence by his militias.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told Reuters: "We have already said that we will not accept any recount because for us that is accepting rigged results. They had custody of the ballot boxes for two weeks and they must have stuffed them with their votes."

Zimbabwe's High Court was due to rule on Monday on a MDC application to force the electoral commission to release the presidential result.

A summit of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) in neighboring Zambia overran by several hours into the early hours of Sunday.

A Zambian official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters the delay was caused by a disagreement over the final communique.

"The delay to conclude the meeting has been caused by a disagreement on how the final communique should be phrased. Some leaders feel that including the word crisis would be inappropriate while others say the extraordinary (summit) in itself shows there is a crisis in Zimbabwe," he said.

(Additional reporting by Serena Chaudry and Shapi Shacinda in Lusaka, MacDonald Dzirutwe, Nelson Banya, Stella Mapenzauswa, Muchena Zigomo in Harare and Sue Thomas in Johannesburg; Writing by Barry Moody; Editing by Marius Bosch and Tim Pearce)