ZIMBABWE: Regional Leaders Decide Against Tsvangirai

Southern Africa's leaders have told Zimbabwe's two main parties to form a unity government and to share control of the ministry which supervises the country's police force, but Prime Minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai has rejected their decision. Tsvangirai told a news conference at the end of a regional summit early on Monday that in view of the 'utter contempt' with which his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was treated by President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF, sharing control of the Home Affairs ministry 'cannot work.' He went on to accuse Southern African heads of state of not having 'the courage and the decency (to) look Mr Mugabe in the eyes and tell him that his position was wrong.' It had been agreed earlier in negotiations that Mugabe would retain the Defence ministry, which controls the army and air force. Zimbabwe's leaders have been deadlocked for two months over the composition of the power-sharing government agreed to during September. Regional leaders represented by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) called the extraordinary summit on Sunday in an attempt to resolve the deadlock and to discuss the crisis in the war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.