African leaders meet on Zimbabwe, police move in Harare

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - African leaders meeting in Tanzania on Wednesday on Zimbabwe's political crisis were not expected to bow to Western-led pressure to censure President Robert Mugabe over a police crackdown.

Mugabe was due in Tanzania to brief the Southern African Development Community (SADC), gathered for the first time since his government suppressed a March 11 rally in which scores of Mugabe opponents were detained and later appeared showing signs of being beaten.

As leaders converged on the Tanzanian capital, Zimbabwe police sealed off the Harare headquarters of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which accuses Mugabe of political abuses and dire economic mismanagement.

Dozens of armed officers surrounded the office building, blocking roads and preventing anyone from entering for a scheduled MDC news conference.

The special two-day Tanzania summit will be a test for the 14-member SADC grouping, accused in some quarters of not flexing its political muscle against Mugabe's government.

Political analysts said regional leaders were unlikely to condemn Mugabe publicly, but the Tanzanian summit was important in focusing world attention on Zimbabwe's escalating crisis.

"Whatever spin the government will try to put on this, this is an emergency summit on Zimbabwe and it basically means that Zimbabwe has become an issue in Africa too," said Eldred Masunungure, a political science professor at Harare's University of Zimbabwe.

"But I don't think there is going to be the kind of public condemnation that some Western countries are calling for, and I am sure Mugabe will be happy with that," he told Reuters.

SANCTIONS THREAT

Britain, pressing for action at the United Nations, has urged African countries to confront Mugabe after images of bruised activists -- including MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai -- provoked threats of more Western-led economic sanctions.

If carried out, some fear sanctions would inflict more pain on ordinary Zimbabweans already grappling with an economy shrinking faster than any other outside a war zone.

Political analysts say the country's deepening recession threatens to destabilize the region as millions flee the world's highest inflation rate -- 1,700 percent -- plus a jobless rate above 80 percent and food shortages.

Southern African countries have largely adopted a quiet approach to the Zimbabwe crisis in contrast to the West's clamor for tougher action.

Regional heavyweight South Africa, straining to accommodate millions of Zimbabwe's economic refugees, has said "constructive diplomacy" it is the only way to keep dialogue open with Mugabe.

President Thabo Mbeki was due in Tanzania to join the talks.

But, last week Zambia broke ranks, with President Levy Mwanawasa comparing his neighbor with a "sinking Titanic" and saying SADC might be ready to act.

Mugabe, 83, has remained defiant in the midst of the turmoil, repeating charges that the MDC are Western stooges bent on toppling him from office.

Zimbabwe police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said six MDC members had been arrested in the last few days for a series of petrol bomb attacks on police stations around the country, shops and passenger trains.

"These criminal acts ... have descended into orchestrated and organized acts of terrorism," Bvudzijena said in a statement published in state media.

Mugabe, Zimbabwe's sole ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, has traded on his legacy as a leading light in Africa's anti-colonial struggle and says he is the victim of Western sabotage for his policy of seizing white-owned farms to distribute to landless blacks.

(Additional reporting by Cris Chinaka and MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare)