GORDON BROWN will refuse to attend a forthcoming summit of European Union and African leaders in Lisbon if Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe is invited.

During a meeting at No 10 last week the prime minister warned his Portuguese counterpart, Jose Socrates, currently president of the EU, against inviting the Zimbabwean leader to the summit.

“Can you imagine if Gordon and Mugabe are together in the same room?” said a British minister, recalling embarrassing shots of the 83-year-old dictator shaking hands with Jack Straw at the United Nations in New York and Prince Charles at the Pope’s funeral in Rome.

“You can be sure Mugabe will get himself photographed shaking Gordon’s hand. There’s no way that’s going to happen,” the minister added. “If it means the meeting cannot go ahead, so be it. It’s already been delayed for years.”

Portugal took over the rotating presidency of the EU this month. It announced that improving relations with Africa would be a priority, with the first EU-Africa summit in seven years in December. The last attempt to hold such a meeting in 2003 was cancelled because of Mugabe.

This time the Portuguese have refused to exclude Mugabe from the guest list, despite an EU travel ban on the Zimbabwean president.

Glenys Kinnock, a Labour MEP, warned that the Lisbon summit could offer Mugabe a chance to “gloat and strut” on the international stage while his people suffered at home.

The Portuguese seem to have succumbed to pressure from the African Union, whose members threatened a boycott if Mugabe was not invited.

On his first trip after assuming the EU presidency, Socrates travelled to Ghana for an African Union meeting where he was told its 53 members should decide who to send.

“Today, it is Zimbabwe,” said Aziz Pahad, South Africa’s deputy foreign minister. “Tomorrow it could be us.”

Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, is brokering talks between Mugabe’s government and opposition. But he is said to be losing patience after members of the ruling Zanu-PF boycotted the talks for the third time last week.

On the other side, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change has been unable to patch up a damaging split.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s economy worsens by the day. Millions face impending famine because of harvest failure in the south. Shops and factories across the country have closed and thousands of business-men are behind bars amid chaos caused by the regime’s so-called Operation Slash Prices.

In a novel way of dealing with inflation, believed to be up to 15,000%, the government has sent militias into shops, forcing managers to cut prices by more than half. Often the so-call-ed price inspectors then sweep up the goods themselves, suggesting this may be a way of keeping the security forces “on side”.

The price cuts saw crowds descend on shops to pick up bargains such as television sets for £12 or fast-vanishing commodities.

At Afro Foods in central Harare, riot police with dogs were used to control a stampede of more than 5,000 who gathered because it was the only shop in the capital where cooking oil was still available.

Price inspectors had discovered the consignment imported from South Africa and ordered shop managers to sell the cooking oil for one tenth of its previous price. Among the crowds, in a priority queue, were several hundred members of the army, police and prison service.

By the end of the week, 2,776 shop owners and business executives had been arrested.

Police have also arrested hundreds of bus drivers and impounded their buses for overcharging, stranding thousands of workers.

The operation has led many shops to close rather than face massive losses. It is almost impossible to find basic commodities such as bread, flour, maize meal, salt, sugar, milk and fuel.

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