World leaders say Zimbabwe vote is illegitimate

LONDON (Reuters) - World leaders condemned Zimbabwe's election as illegitimate on Friday and Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said the international community had the right to intervene to end the crisis.

Defying international pressure to call off or delay the vote, President Robert Mugabe went ahead despite the withdrawal of opposition contender Morgan Tsvangirai who accused Mugabe's supporters of violence and intimidation.

The U.N. Security Council said in a unanimously agreed statement it was "a matter of deep regret" that Zimbabwe went ahead with the election because conditions for a free and fair vote did not exist.

"Members of the council agreed they would come back to the issue in the coming days," it said.

The statement, watered down from a much tougher previous version, was backed by the whole 15-nation council, including South Africa, China and Russia -- all of which had been long opposed to any discussion on Zimbabwe.

"We have already started discussions with some colleagues on a resolution that would impose appropriately focused sanctions on the regime," said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the council's current president.

But diplomats said that because of resistance from South Africa, China and Russia, any sanctions were unlikely to be imposed by the council. Rather they would be imposed by the United States, the European Union and other Western governments.

"SYSTEMATIC VIOLENCE"

Meeting in the Japanese city of Kyoto, foreign ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) rich countries said in a statement: "We deplore the actions of the Zimbabwean authorities -- systematic violence, obstruction and intimidation."

The G8 said Zimbabwe's first round of voting in March, when Tsvangirai beat Mugabe but did not get an outright majority, must be respected.

Tutu said the world had the right to override Zimbabwe's sovereignty and intervene.

"A government has the obligation to protect its citizens. If it will not protect them ... or it is unable to do so, then the international community knows now that it has an instrument to intervene to ensure that a situation does not deteriorate further," Tutu told Britain's Channel 4 Television.

Tutu said African countries should declare Mugabe an illegitimate leader and impose a blockade of landlocked Zimbabwe, including a flight ban.

"Mugabe and his sidekicks would not be able to -- as they are now -- escape the rigors of their own policies," he said.

The top official of the African Union said there could be no immediate solution to the problem of Zimbabwe.

"I am convinced it will be solved in a credible way. But please give us time to solve it with our heads of state," AU Commission chairman Jean Ping said at a foreign ministers' meeting ahead of an African summit in Egypt on Monday.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe posed a threat to regional stability.

"I trust that the relevant African authorities (the Southern African Development Community and the African Union) will draw the necessary conclusions, in the interests not only of Zimbabwe but of the whole of Africa," he said in a statement.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper described the vote as "as ugly perversion of democracy".

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell, Sophie Hardach and Isabel Reynolds in Kyoto; Daniel Wallis and Cynthia Johnston in Sharm el-Sheikh; Louise Egan in Ottawa; Editing by Stephen Weeks and Ralph Gowling)