Zimbabwe's Mugabe Officially Sworn In

President Condemns Detractors in Speech

HARARE, Zimbabwe, June 29 -- President Robert Mugabe cemented his government's hold over Zimbabwe on Sunday with the announcement of his overwhelming election victory followed by an inauguration before the approving gazes of the military leaders who engineered his brutal political comeback.

To the rat-a-tat-tat of snare drums and the roar of fighter jets overhead, an unsmiling Mugabe stood ramrod straight before Zimbabwe's newly unified ruling clique, which all but obliterated the opposition after his loss in the first round of voting in March.

In a runoff Friday, boycotted by his only rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe got 85.5 percent of the vote, according to official results. Two key African observer missions sharply criticized the election in reports Sunday.

As darkness fell at State House, the presidential residence, Mugabe gave a brief victory speech chastising his many critics inside and outside the country who had suggested canceling the runoff because of pervasive state-sponsored violence and repression.

"Once again we have shamed all our detractors, who, through gullible people, tried to use every opportunity to undermine our independence and desecrate our hard-earned and inalienable right to self-determination," Mugabe said as he opened his sixth term in office.

He singled out Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler, Britain, which Mugabe maintains created and supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change as a way to return the country to imperial control.

"Zimbabwe shall never be a colony again," Mugabe intoned in a phrase long part of his standard political rhetoric. "Long live Zimbabwe."

The hastily organized ceremony appeared to bring to a close a three-month stretch of unprecedented political turmoil for a nation locked in an accelerating economic collapse.

Opposition party leaders and their families have been publicly humiliated, chased into hiding and forced into exile. Even as Mugabe was being sworn in, hundreds were still recuperating in hospitals or missing. More than 80 are dead.

The Pan-African Parliament reported that the vote was neither free nor fair, as did the observer mission of the Southern African Development Community, the region's most influential international body, which said: "The elections did not represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe."

Mugabe is scheduled to attend an African Union summit in Egypt on Monday. Although international criticism is mounting, there are no signs of a diplomatic or military initiative capable of removing him from power.

Tsvangirai's party has a delegation at the summit, with the goal of winning the appointment of an African Union envoy to spearhead negotiations with Mugabe. The opposition also wants the March 29 election results, in which Tsvangirai got 48 percent to Mugabe's 43 percent, to be the basis of talks, rather than Friday's vote.

"We don't accept these sham results," Tsvangirai spokesman George Sibotshiwe said, speaking from Egypt. "As far as we're concerned, he has no mandate."

Mugabe offered in his speech to begin negotiations with the opposition, though years of talks have produced few gains.

Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia, since the end in 1980 of the white-supremacist government, which was undermined by a guerrilla force he led. But some in Mugabe's party are pressing the president, 84, to initiate a succession plan. His new term is for five years, but many ruling-party politicians are seeking to have him hand control to a new generation in the next year.

As the inauguration ceremony wound down, Mugabe's vice president, Joice Mujuru, lauded him and praised the ruling party.

"The victory we are celebrating today, your excellency, put to shame our detractors who do not wish well for our country," Mujuru said. "Bad people, your excellency, thrive because good people choose to do nothing about them."