Zimbabwe opposition to get majority in Cabinet

Zimbabwe's opposition will get more Cabinet posts than President Robert Mugabe's party in the long-sought unity government, state radio reported Sunday.

It said the Cabinet under a power-sharing deal brokered by South African President Thabo Mbeki will have 31 members; 16 from the opposition and 15 from Mugabe's party.

Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the opposition have begun discussing the appointments before the ceremonial signing on Monday of a deal reached after weeks of negotiations that followed widely discredited elections, the radio said.

Under a media blackout on the talks, no details were immediately available on Cabinet appointments, but the opposition has demanded control of the police while agreeing to Mugabe retaining control of the military.

Both the police and military have been blamed for state-orchestrated violence and torture of Mugabe's opponents.

ZANU-PF, the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai and the smaller opposition grouping of Arthur Mutambara met in Harare on Saturday to work on Cabinet appointments before a meeting of Mugabe's politburo, his party's top policy body, the radio said.

The 30-member politburo "endorsed" the power-sharing agreement that was announced Thursday, the radio said.

Attorney David Coltart, an opposition lawmaker, said in a message to his supporters the first task lying ahead was for the Harare parliament to pass a constitutional amendment forming a new power-sharing government enabling the administration to urgently start work.

The new government will keep Mugabe as president with greatly reduced powers along with two largely ceremonial vice presidents drawn from ZANU-PF. Tsvangirai becomes prime minister with two opposition deputies, Coltart said.

"Although he (Tsvangirai) does not have absolute power he does have substantial power," he said. "This is undoubtedly historic but we still have a long and treacherous road to travel."

Virtually all of the Cabinet ministers to be appointed by the opposition "have at some stage in the last nine years been brutalized on the instructions of those they will now have to work with," said Coltart.

Mugabe is still to chair the Cabinet, with Tsvangirai to sit as vice chair. But the opposition leader heads a Council of Ministers that will supervise the work of the Cabinet, Coltart said.

"Zimbabwe remains highly polarized and it will take statesmanship on all sides to make this work," he said.

The compromise over the dual roles of Mugabe and Tsvangirai broke a deadlock that threatened to collapse the power sharing talks that began in June. It reflects the votes cast for their different parties in March 29 elections. In parliamentary voting, ZANU-PF garnered slightly more votes but not the most parliament seats.

In presidential polling, Tsvangirai did not win enough votes to avoid a runoff against Mugabe. An onslaught of state-sponsored violence against Tsvangirai's supporters led him to drop out of the presidential runoff and Mugabe was declared the overwhelming winner of the second vote widely denounced as a sham.

Long-simmering and bitter differences between the two sides and the nation's worsening economic collapse are expected to put the power-sharing deal under massive pressure.

Hours before the accord was announced, Mugabe told a meeting of fiercely loyal tribal chiefs he would never allow the opposition "to govern this country."

Mugabe, 84 and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, and Tsvangirai, 56, are seen to have been forced into the deal by economic pressures.

Zimbabwe has by far the world's highest official inflation of 11 million percent, though independent financial institutions put real inflation closer to 40 million percent and rising daily.

Chronic shortages of local currency led the central bank last week to announce it would be legal to trade in foreign currency and use it to buy scarce food and basic household goods _ "U.S. dollarizing" the economy _ a move it had repeatedly ruled out.

Western nations poised to send in urgently needed aid and investment have expressed wariness over whether to back Mugabe's continued place in decision making. They accuse him of holding onto power through violence and fraud and ruining the economy following the often violent seizures he ordered of thousands of white-owned commercial farms, the backbone of the agriculture-based economy, in 2000.