President Mugabe and his rival Morgan Tsvangirai got on remarkably well and found common ground at a dinner for two last month, it emerged yesterday — just as Mr Mugabe announced that he was effectively abandoning power-sharing talks.

The two men met at the five-star Rainbow Towers in Harare shortly after their historic handshake and shared what a close Tsvangirai aide described as an amicable meal. “They got on surprisingly well,” he told The Times.

Another spokesman for Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said: “They didn’t get on like a house on fire but Morgan felt at the time there was common ground between them. But it has evaporated since that only one-on-one meeting and both are now polarised as ever.”

The source said that during the dinner Mr Tsvangirai repeatedly raised the issue of violence carried out by Mr Mugabe’s army, police, war veterans and youth militia against MDC supporters before the presidential run-off elections in June. Mr Tsvangirai withdrew from the poll because of the violence and Mr Mugabe had himself declared the winner.

Expert View

The rowdy scenes in parliament do not indicate that Mr Mugabe’s grip on power is slipping. Indeed, the political deadlock could cause things to worsen

Jonathan Clayton

• More

• Post a comment

Related Links

• Mugabe jeers broadcast on state television

• Boo all you like, Mugabe is in power

• Zimbabwe assembly elects MDC speaker

“Mugabe said the violence came from the MDC but Morgan challenged him,” the spokesman said. “Eventually Mugabe agreed that they should meet again where Morgan could present him with the evidence. It was meant to happen the following Thursday but it never happened. Mugabe became unavailable. Now the old suspicion and antagonism have come back.”

Relations soured further yesterday after Mr Mugabe sought to do a deal with a breakaway faction, made it clear that he would not offer the MDC leader a senior job and said that he intended to remain President for a full five-year term.

“We shall soon be setting up a Government,” the state-owned Daily Herald newspaper quoted him as saying. “The MDC don’t want to come in apparently.” The MDC insisted that it was committed to the talks, denouncing Mr Mugabe’s comments as “a declaration of war against the people”.

“You can’t have a Cabinet without a mandate,” Nelson Chamisa, an MDC official, said. “He should wait for the conclusion of the dialogue together with the MDC, and Mr Tsvangirai, on the way forward. Otherwise what he is doing is a recipe for disaster.”

The decision to withdraw from the five-week negotiations came hours after Mr Mugabe was jeered in Parliament and is likely to isolate him further. The talks are the outcome of months of delicate diplomacy within the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the regional bloc, and were mediated by President Mbeki of South Africa.

They were arranged after elections in March that gave the MDC a majority in Parliament and an initial edge in the presidential elections. Mr Mugabe, who claimed presidential victory after the second round, was accused of turning the vote into a bloody and fraudulent farce that left 120 dead and thousands maimed and homeless.

Earlier Mr Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party and both factions of the MDC had expressed general satisfaction with a draft agreement. Mr Tsvangirai, the leader of the larger faction of the MDC, had stalled the talks over proposals that would make him Prime Minister with considerably less authority than Mr Mugabe as executive President.

Mr Mugabe’s plans to form a Cabinet mean that he will be drawing his ministers from the minority party in Parliament, in apparent violation of basic constitutional principles. “It’s another coup by Mugabe,” a Western diplomat said.

The 84-year-old despot faces being censured by the SADC and losing the support of Mr Mbeki, whose own credibility has suffered because of his protection of Mr Mugabe. Observers said that Mr Mugabe’s comments increased the chances of the UN Security Council successfully passing a resolution paving the way to international sanctions. An earlier attempt was thwarted in July, largely by Russia.

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president