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Mugabe warns of uprising if he loses

War veterans 'will return to the bush to fight' if opposition wins

By MacDonald Dzirutwe REUTERS NEWS AGENCY | Saturday, June 14, 2008

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HARARE, Zimbabwe | President Robert Mugabe said Friday that liberation war veterans would take up arms if he loses a June 27 presidential runoff vote.

Mr. Mugabe told youth members of his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party in the capital Harare that the veterans had told him they would launch a new bush war if the election was won by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, whom he accuses of being a puppet of the West.

"They said if this country goes back into white hands just because we have used a pen [to vote], 'We will return to the bush to fight,'" Mr. Mugabe said, in the latest ratcheting up of pressure to extend his 28-year presidency.

Mr. Tsvangirai, rights groups and Western powers accuse Mr. Mugabe of unleashing a brutal campaign, using the police to harass the opposition in a bid to win the runoff after he lost presidential and parliamentary elections on March 29.

Mr. Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), fell short of the majority needed to win the presidency outright in that vote. He says 66 of his followers have been killed since.

Zimbabwe's High Court on Friday ordered police to bring MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti to court on Saturday and justify why he had been arrested at Harare's airport on Thursday. Mr. Biti faces a treason charge that could carry a death sentence.

"The order we got is for him to be brought to court and for the police to show cause why they are holding him," defense attorney Lewis Uriri said.

Mr. Mugabe, a former guerrilla commander who has been president since independence from Britain in 1980, blames the MDC for the violence.

"We cannot allow the British to dominate us here again through their puppets. You saw what they were saying [after the March elections], celebrating an MDC victory," the 84-year-old ruler said Friday.

"These were the whites we took farms from."

The war veterans, usually acting alongside the ZANU-PF youth militia, have regularly been used to intimidate Mr. Mugabe's opponents and were involved in implementing the government's seizure of thousands of white-owned farms beginning in 2000.

Some of the seized land was given to the veterans.

Earlier, the MDC said police impounded two campaign buses used by Mr. Tsvangirai in the latest action against the opposition leader in the election campaign.

Mr. Tsvangirai, who has been detained four times in the past week and has had his own vehicle confiscated, will continue his campaign, MDC spokesman George Sibotshiwe said.