Zambia has called an emergency summit of southern African leaders for this weekend to discuss Zimbabwe’s post-election impasse.

Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian President who chairs the Southern African Development Community (SADC), said that the crisis required a concerted effort by all southern African countries to find a solution.

The SADC summit will be held in Lusaka on Saturday. It was the first move by Zimbabwe’s neighbours to intervene after the March 29 elections and is likely to anger President Mugabe, who clashed bitterly with Mr Mwanawasa when the Zambian leader tried to put Zimbabwe on the agenda at an SADC meeting last year.

Zambian officials said that they did not know whether Mr Mugabe would attend.

Ten days after Zimbabweans went to the polls, no announcement has yet been made on the result of the presidential contest, which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claims was won by its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.

A lawyer for the Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission said today that it would be “dangerous” for the High Court to order the release of presidential election results, as the MDC has demanded by the opposition MDC.

The ruling politburo of Mr Mugabe's Zanu (PF) party gave him the go-ahead to fight a second-round run-off vote against Mr Tsvangirai if no candidate has won 50 per cent of the vote in the first round.

The MDC, which dislodged Zanu (PF) in parliament for the first time since independence, says that Mr Tsvangirai won 50.3 per cent of the vote.

George Chikumbirike, a lawyer for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, told judge Tendai Uchena, who was hearing the MDC application: “It would be dangerous in my view to give an order because it might not be complied with ... because of outside exigencies which the party (ZEC) will be unable to control.”

He did not elaborate but appeared to be referring to rising tension in Zimbabwe because of the post-election impasse.

Mr Chikumbirike also declined to say how far the ZEC had gone in preparing to announce the result, saying this was privileged information which “the commission has entitlement to release when it’s ready”.

Jacob Zuma, leader of the ruling party in Zimbabwe’s powerful neighbour South Africa, earlier joined a chorus of demands for the release of the results. Zimbabwe’s third presidential candidate, ruling party defector Simba Makoni also urged the urgent release of the outcome.

In Brussels, Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, voiced concern at the delay.

The MDC says Mugabe has unleashed a wave of violence against the opposition since the election and called on African nations to intervene to prevent further bloodshed. Mr Zuma, who rivals President Thabo Mbeki as the most powerful man in South Africa and is the frontrunner to succeed him in 2009, told the Star newspaper: “I think the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission should have announced results by now.”

Mr Mwanawasa has been one of the few regional leaders to publicly voice his concerns about the situation in Zimbabwe, memorably comparing the plight of the country’s economy to the sinking of the Titanic.

But Mr Mugabe has often bridled at any kind of outside intervention in the affairs of

Zimbabwe, which he has ruled interrupted since independence in 1980.

The prospect of an SADC meeting on Zimbabwe was welcomed, however, by the MDC, which has been in close contact with other countries in the region since the deadlocked election.

“We hope the outcome of the meeting is going to be a strong message to Mugabe and also action that would help resolve the impasse in the country,” said Nelson Chamisa, the MDC spokesman.

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