Zimbabwe police seal off stadium, bar opposition rally

HARARE, Mar 11 (Reuters) Armed Zimbabwe riot police sealed off a stadium today ahead of an opposition prayer meeting which officials have banned, calling it a political protest against President Robert Mugabe.

Teams of police officers, many of them armed with shotguns and tear gas canisters, patrolled around the stadium in the Harare township of Highfield, where riot police clashed with opposition supporters last month.

Organisers of the prayer meeting, sponsored by a coalition of opposition, church and civic groups, have said they plan to go ahead with the rally despite police warnings yesterday that it would not be permitted.

Shop owners in the area shuttered their stores and some employed private security guards, while hundreds of people wandered the streets under the gaze of police units.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena yesterday accused the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of hiring and arming ''thugs'' to attack police, and warned that security forces would be ''fully deployed'' to prevent the prayer rally.

''As far as we are concerned that is a political rally ... and we are going to stop that meeting,'' he told a news conference.

Officials imposed a three-month ban on political protests and rallies after last month's violence, which saw riot police use water cannon and teargas to break up an MDC rally state media said was intended to launch street protests against Mugabe's government.

The MDC says it has been a victim of a ''dirty tricks'' campaign by the government in which its officials are accused of violent crimes committed by ruling party youth brigades.

Mugabe, 83 and in power since independence in 1980, dismisses the MDC as a puppet of Zimbabwe's former colonial master Britain which opposes him for seizing white-owned commercial farms to give to blacks.

The country is in the grip of its worst economic crisis in decades, with inflation now above 1,700 percent, unemployment of close to 80 per cent and regular shortages of food, fuel and foreign exchange.

REUTERS SB PM1416