Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai will go head to head in a run-off presidential election on June 27, Zimbabwe electoral officials announced yesterday.

Mr Tsvangirai accepted the challenge immediately, having threatened earlier to boycott a new election, but called the decision illegal and said that the contest could only take place in the absence of violence.

Analysts in Harare said the date gave the Harare regime six weeks to complete its objective of terrorising sufficient people to ensure the pro-democracy movement could not repeat Mr Tsvangirai's electoral triumph in March. Nevertheless, Mr Tsvangirai said he was totally confident he would win again.

The date is seen as carefully chosen to ensure that Mr Mugabe's Cabinet can continue operating without having to recall Parliament, which has been controlled by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change since the parliamentary and presidential elections on March 29. But Mr Tsvangirai said that his party would “begin to fulfil our mandate to save the people” regardless of whether or not Parliament was reconvened.

“When we attain our liberty again we will guard it jealously,” he told delegates at the 55th Congress of the Liberal International, meeting in Belfast. “The first act of the Parliament will be to begin a consultation on a new constitution.”

A month after the ballot Mr Tsvangirai was told by the Zimbabwe electoral commission that he had 48 per cent of the vote, beating Mr Mugabe by five percentage points. Failure to win more than 50 per cent of the votes triggered a run-off.

Eldred Masunungure, who directs a respected political polling body, said: “The calculation by those who are instigating the violence is that it will ... give them the chance to complete the ‘re-education' of voters. The fear factor looms so large now ... It may be that Zanu (PF) will reverse the result.”

Mr Tsvangirai was given a rapturous welcome in Belfast, when he was embraced by the Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade. Mr Tsvangirai said he was returning immediately to Zimbabwe from Belfast. He has been out of the country since the elections in March because of death threats. Although he described Mr Mugabe as a brutal dictator, Mr Tsvangirai signalled that he was prepared to give his predecessor immunity from prosecution for past alleged crimes. Hospital figures yesterday confirmed reports that Mr Mugabe's Zanu (PF) party's militias, police and soldiers had redoubled attacks on perceived opposition supporters. The number of victims of political violence seeking help at hospitals shot up to 45 a day in the first two weeks of May, from an average of ten in April.

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