Tsvangirai threatens to quit government

• Mugabe risks MDC fury by parcelling out ministries

• Mbeki to travel to Zim 'next week' - MDC

• Morgan Tsvangirai: Statement on the state of cabinet talks

• Tsvangirai calls in Mbeki to break deadlock

• Zanu PF says MDC jeopardising talks

• Zuma urges Zimbabwe parties to keep talking

• MDC wants urgent SADC intervention

• Leaders meet, fail to agree on Cabinet

• Zanu PF concedes finance ministry as cabinet hopes rise

• Zanu PF says claims of deadlock 'mischievous'

• Mbeki resignation hangs over Zim talks

• Mbeki called in as Tsvangirai, Mugabe deadlocked?

• Mugabe returns, says cabinet by end of the week

• Tsvangirai: We must respond to crisis with utmost urgency

• Cabinet deadlock 'surmountable' - Tsvangirai

• Misihairabwi: Cabinet talks on course

• Mugabe calls on West to lift 'demonic' sanctions

• Zim parties to agree on ministries 'within days'

• Mbeki still the point man in Zimbabwe - SADC

• Mbeki seen staying as Zimbabwe mediator

• Excerpts of Mutambara's speech at signing of power sharing deal

• Tsvangirai confident of rallying international support

• Copy of Zimbabwe power sharing document

• In Quotes: World reaction to power sharing deal

• Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara sign power sharing deal

Posted to the web: 13/10/2008 01:54:10
ZIMBABWE'S opposition MDC will walk away from a power-sharing deal if new mediation efforts fail to break a deadlock over cabinet posts, the party's leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Sunday.

But the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was prepared to continue talking if it seemed agreement could be reached, he said.

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki was due in Harare on Monday to try to conclude negotiations to end years of political and economic crisis in the southern African nation.

A government notice on Saturday showed Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe had allocated three key ministries to his Zanu PF party, angering the opposition and threatening a power-sharing deal brokered by Mbeki last month.

The parties have been at loggerheads since the signing of the September 15 pact on how to divide up 31 cabinet posts.

"If this mediation fails we will say 'this marriage has failed to be consummated, and we cannot force things'. There will be no option but to go our separate ways," Tsvangirai told supporters at a rally in Harare.

"(But) as long as there is an opportunity we will continue to negotiate until we reach an agreement."

Mugabe allocated to his party the ministries of defence, home affairs - which is in charge of the police - and finance, crucial for the resuscitation of the devastated economy.

The cabinet impasse has outraged Zimbabweans who had hoped the power-sharing agreement would end an economic meltdown.

Tsvangirai said should Zanu PF take the defence post, the MDC had to have home affairs. The opposition party was also the only one that could muster the goodwill of international donors and persuade them to help rescue the economy, he said.

Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation, last measured at 231 million percent, chronic shortages of food and foreign currency, and crumbling infrastructure.

The power-sharing deal allows Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980, to retain the presidency and chair the cabinet. Tsvangirai, as prime minister, will head a council of ministers supervising the cabinet.

Zanu PF will have 15 seats in the cabinet, Tsvangirai's MDC 13 and a splinter MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara three posts, giving the opposition a combined majority. - Reuters
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