Zimbabwe election result delayed

HARARE (Reuters) - Results from Zimbabwe's presidential election, in which President Robert Mugabe is the only candidate, have been delayed but the outcome should be announced on Sunday, electoral officials said.

Earlier, government sources said they expected Mugabe to be inaugurated on Sunday in time to attend an African Union (AU) summit in Egypt on Monday. It was not clear how much the delay, caused by the wait for results from rural areas, would hold up the swearing-in.

The election was widely condemned around the world after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew a week ago, saying almost 90 of his supporters had been killed in government-backed violence.

"Tonight we cannot give the results. I don't want to give a time-frame, but I hope it will be tomorrow," Utoile Silaigwana, the deputy chief elections officer for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, told Reuters.

The government sources said tallies from two-thirds of polling stations showed Mugabe, 84, defeating Tsvangirai by a huge margin.

Tsvangirai's name remained on ballot papers after electoral authorities refused to accept his decision to withdraw a week ago on the grounds of violence against his supporters. He has taken refuge in the Dutch embassy since then.

"The tallies are indicating that despite the wishes of our detractors and the propaganda of our enemies, the voter turnout was very big and that we are going to see a landslide victory," said one government source, who declined to be identified.

Mugabe intends to attend the AU summit in Sharm el Sheikh

after extending his 28-year rule of Zimbabwe, a once-prosperous country now crippled by poverty and hyper-inflation.

President George W. Bush called the vote a sham and said Washington would impose new sanctions on an illegitimate government. He said he would call on the U.N. to impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and a travel ban on its officials.

The European Union said in a statement that Zimbabweans could not vote freely and so "the election lost all legitimacy as well as the administration that has resulted from it".

Foreign ministers preparing for the AU summit indicated it would not support sanctions. African countries are believed to have more sway with Mugabe than Western powers.

(Additional reporting by Nelson Banya and MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare, Marius Bosch in Johannesburg, Daniel Wallis and Cynthia Johnston in Sharm el Sheikh and Tabassum Zakaria in Washington; writing by Barry Moody; editing by Andrew Roche)