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A runoff was “merely extending and exacerbating the crisis" and legitimising “Mugabe’s constitutional coup”.

The answer, Mr Biti said, should have been for African leaders to persuade Mugabe to negotiate a coalition government, but instead the leaders of neighbouring countries had failed to confront Mr Mugabe.

“What’s concerning us is this lack of statesmanship, of leadership by African leaders,” he said.

“I think that the paralysis of leadership and perspective lies (with) certain officers indebted to Robert Mugabe ...”

Mr Biti’s party has asked the Southern African Development Organization to replace Thabo Mbeki as its chief negotiator in the Zimbabwe crisis.

The MDC says the South African President's insistence on “quiet diplomacy" to persuade Mr Mugabe to change has largely failed. His negotiations that led to election results being posted outside ballot stations did however ensure a more open process that allowed the opposition to claim victory.

International efforts to intervene have been hampered by Mr Mbeki and South Africa’s current chairmanship of the UN Security Council.

“The Zimbabwe crisis is exposing every leader on the African continent, embarrassing us as Africans because we are not able to resolve our own problems,” Mr Biti said.

He called for the Southern African bloc, the African Union and the United Nations to help ensure a secure and democratic environment for run-off elections, including an end to the “reign of terror" which has left dozens of opposition supporters dead, hundreds injured and thousands displaced from their homes.

The MDC also wants an international force to police the country, freedom for the opposition to campaign, international election observers not biased toward the Mugabe regime and a reconstitution of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to include international board members.

Mr Biti claimed that many of the millions of Zimbabweans who have fled the country planned to return to vote in the June runoff election.

A third of the population has fled Zimbabwe in recent years as the country confronts chronic shortages of food, medicine, fuel and cash precipitated by the government’s seizure of white-owned farms that once produced enough to feed the country and export to neighbours.

The government this month introduced a half-billion Zimbabwe dollar note in efforts to deal with runaway inflation that unofficial estimates put at 700,000 percent a year.

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