Zimbabwe opposition says military wants to kill its party leader

Zimbabwe's opposition party accused the country's military Monday of plotting to assassinate the group's presidential candidate using snipers.

The Movement for Democratic Change said Morgan Tsvangirai planned to return to Zimbabwe to contest the June 27 run-off election once security measures are in place to protect him against the alleged assassination plot.

The opposition says it received details of the alleged plot on Saturday as Tsvangirai was on his way to the airport in Johannesburg, South Africa, to return home.

"The assassination plot involves snipers," party secretary-general Tendai Biti told the Associated Press after a news conference in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. He said 18 snipers were involved in the alleged plot.

"It is the military [plotting], the JOC (Joint Operational Command) that has been running the country" since Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe lost March 29 elections to Tsvangirai. "I cannot speak [more] of that because it would put a lot of lives at risk," Biti said.

Biti also condemned African leaders' failure to confront Mugabe, Zimbabwe's leader of 28 years, in the strongest terms yet used by his party.

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.

Tsvangirai says he won the elections outright. But official results and those compiled by independent monitors show he did not win the 50 per cent plus one vote needed to avoid a run-off.

Biti said the run-off legitimizes Mugabe's "theft" and would not resolve Zimbabwe's crisis. He said it still was not too late to negotiate a "unity government of national healing." Not contesting was not an option as it would hand Mugabe victory, he said.

"The basic problem is that we have an old man, a geriatric, who is not prepared to give up power and that situation isn't going to change on June 27," Biti said.

A run-off was "merely extending and exacerbating the crisis" and would legitimize "Mugabe's constitutional coup."

The answer, he said, is for African leaders to persuade Mugabe to negotiate a coalition government.