``This is a welcome resolution,'' Zimbabwean Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said in a phone interview today from the capital, Harare. ``Government is ready for dialogue with anyone, so long as it isn't dialogue concocted by the West.''

The AU defied calls by Western leaders to criticize Mugabe, who won a sixth term as Zimbabwe's president in a runoff election on June 27 that African observers said wasn't free or fair. Tsvangirai pulled out of the ballot because he said state- sponsored violence has killed at least 95 of his supporters and made 200,000 homeless.

While Tsvangirai won the March 29 presidential election, he didn't garner the 50 percent needed to avoid a second round of voting, according to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. The MDC secured control of the lower house of parliament in the earlier poll.

``A government of national unity doesn't recognize the fact that we won the March 29 election,'' Tsvangirai said in a telephone interview from Harare today. ``It doesn't address the violence in the country, which is continuing as we speak.''

Power Sharing

The AU said it was ``deeply concerned'' by the prevailing situation in Zimbabwe after it received ``negative'' reports by African observer missions in Zimbabwe. Rod Alence, a professor of international relations at the University of Witwatersrand, said the resolution was an important step for the continental organization.

``It's a significant step just in the fact that there finally is that kind of indication that African governments, at least some of them, are moving in the direction of openly criticizing the Zimbabwean government,'' he said in a telephone interview from Johannesburg. ``Those kinds of criticism have been made privately for a long time.''

Hossan Zaqqi, an Egyptian government spokesman, said after the meeting of the 53-nation AU that Mugabe had objected to the resolution. South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has been mandated by the Southern African Development Community to mediate an end to Zimbabwe's political crisis, said the 84-year- old Zimbabwean leader remains open to power sharing.

`No Objection'

``There was no objection,'' Mbeki said in remarks broadcast by Johannesburg-based SAfm radio. ``They were fully supportive of the cooperation and dialogue amongst Zimbabwe's political parties to find a solution to the challenges they face.''

The U.S., Britain and the European Union have rejected the results of the runoff election as a sham.

The U.S. plans to introduce a draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council today that will place an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and identify officials subject to a travel ban and asset freeze. South Africa, Zimbabwe's southern neighbor, has criticized the move.

``The text is too over the top,'' South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said in an interview yesterday. ``I don't think this is the kind of pressure that will work.''

Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years and presided over a decade of an economic recession worsened by often-violent seizures of most of the country's white-owned farms. The policy contributed to the world's highest inflation rate, at least 350,000 percent.

In his inauguration speech on June 29, Mugabe said he was open to talks with the opposition.

``We remain committed to negotiations or talks, call them what you will, but they should be based on the fact that we won the last credible election on March 29,'' Tsvangirai said today. ``Then we can move towards some transitional arrangement.''



By Brian Latham and Mike Cohen
From bloomberg.com