Regional summit unlikely to break Zimbabwe deadlock

By Cris Chinaka - Analysis

HARARE (Reuters) - Another African summit on Zimbabwe's political crisis next week is unlikely to break deadlock over a power-sharing deal between President Robert Mugabe and the opposition, and analysts see a bleak future.

Mugabe's camp suggested the meeting of southern African leaders called for January 26 looked doomed after the ruling ZANU-PF and opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai failed to reach agreement at talks brokered by regional leaders on Monday.

"Efforts to finalise the broad-based agreement appeared to have irretrievably collapsed," the government's Herald newspaper said. It said Tsvangirai's party had rejected regional proposals "that would have seen an inclusive government being formed by the end of the week."

Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change is equally pessimistic. The rivals blame each other for the failure to implement a September power-sharing pact that had raised hopes of rescuing Zimbabwe from economic collapse.

Lovemore Madhuku, a lawyer and chairman of constitution reform lobby group NCA, said it appeared increasingly unlikely that Mugabe and Tsvangirai could work together.

"There is a crisis of confidence arising from Tsvangirai's belief that Mugabe wants to trap his MDC party in order to tame it, ease pressure on his government, get some international legitimacy and then absorb or destroy the MDC," he told Reuters.

"On the other hand, Mugabe seems to truly believe that Tsvangirai is a Western puppet holding out for an economic meltdown that may lead to a mass uprising and a fall of his government."

The dispute has centred on who gets which posts in a shared government but is as much as anything about the lack of trust.