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Zimbabwe Ruling Party Prepares Runoff
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"There was no evidence in support of voting irregularities," Kabbah said upon arriving at the airport in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown.
Kabbah praised Mugabe as "a patriot," and said during a meeting Thursday the Zimbabwe leader was "relaxed" despite the reports of his setback at the polls.
That the first "official" word of a runoff came from the ruling party, pre-empting results from the ostensibly independent election commission, underlines that Mugabe's party is Zimbabwe's most powerful authority.
"We agreed to have a rerun at a date to be set" by the commission, Didymus Mutasa, a Cabinet minister who also is secretary of Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, told reporters after a five-hour meeting of the party politburo.
Diplomats said Mugabe might try to delay the runoff for three months.
Earlier, police escorted about 400 war veterans as they paraded silently through downtown Harare. The veterans, who spearheaded the often violent takeover of white farms in recent years, appeared to have been transported to town.
At a news conference, Jabulani Sibanda, head of the Zimbabwe War Veterans' Association, said ZANU-PF lost the elections because "people were pushed by hunger and illegal sanctions," echoing a theme of Mugabe's campaign.
"Under current circumstances the sprit of our people is being provoked," Sibanda said. "We will be forced to defend our sovereignty."
ZANU-PF leaders sounded a similarly combative tone. After the politburo meeting, Mutasa accused the opposition of bribing electoral officials and said his party would contest results for 16 seats in parliament's lower house _ where the long-ruling party lost its majority, according to official results.
Mutasa also accused the opposition of promising to return land to white farmers.
"We are not reversing the land reform _ they will get the shock of their lives," Mutasa said.
The opposition leader has not said he would reverse land reform, but has promised to make an equitable distribution of land to people who know how to farm. Mugabe claimed his land reform was to benefit poor blacks, but gave most seized farms to relatives, friends and cronies, and agricultural production has plunged.
