Zimbabwe to maintain ban on political rallies -report

HARARE, March 1 (Reuters) President Robert Mugabe's government will maintain a ban on political rallies and protests in the capital, Harare, for as long as there is a ''breakdown of law and order'', state media reported today.

Zimbabwe last week imposed a three-month ban on all rallies and demonstrations in many of Harare's volatile poor townships, following clashes between police and opposition supporters.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main opposition party in the southern African nation, has condemned the decision, likening it to a state of emergency, and is challenging it in court.

But the country's justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, told legislators yesterday that the ban would remain in force, the Herald newspaper said.

''That restriction will remain where there is breakdown of law and order,'' Chinamasa was quoted as saying. ''Any (police commissioner) who fails to do that will lose his job.'' Analysts say Mugabe's government faces growing dissent in the face of a deepening economic crisis, marked by inflation of almost 1,600 percent, the highest in the world, and chronic shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency.

A spate of wildcat strikes have hit the country since the start of the year and the opposition has vowed to resist plans to extend Mugabe's term of office, which expires next March, to 2010.

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