Zimbabwe to boost police force for elections - report

HARARE, May 28 (Reuters) Zimbabwe plans to nearly double the size of its police force ahead of general elections next year because of fears the polls could be marred by violence, its state-run newspaper reported today.

The move to beef up security comes amid growing public discontent over a deep economic crisis in the southern African nation and just months after President Robert Mugabe's government launched a violent crackdown on political opponents.

The police have established a committee to prepare for the nationwide elections next year and are recruiting more officers in a drive that is expected to swell the 29,000-strong force, the Herald quoted Senior Assistant Police Commissioner Faustino Mazango as saying.

''We have started a massive recruitment exercise, so that we have a minimum of 50,000 police officers by the time we have elections,'' Mazango said, according to the newspaper.

Mazango, who chairs the police elections committee, said police were not ruling out a chance of violence ahead of and during the elections, which are expected in March 2008, but he added that the force wanted peace to prevail during the polls.

Zimbabwe's security forces provoked sharp international criticism earlier this year when they arrested and beat anti-government protesters at a rally organised by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main opposition party.

The crackdown intensified pressure on Mugabe to relax tough security laws that critics say have been used to keep the opposition, trade unions and the public in check. The government routinely deploys riot squads to crush protests.

On Saturday, riot police, armed with pistols and batons, raided the MDC's head office in Harare, detaining more than 200 people in connection with a recent wave of petrol bombings aimed at police stations, shops and government supporters.

Most of the suspects were released yesterday. A total of 41 could face charges in court.

The opposition denounced the arrests as part of a government campaign to destroy its organisation ahead of the elections.

Government officials say the MDC is trying to overthrow Mugabe through an insurrection in the streets.

Zimbabwe is grappling with inflation of more than 3,700 per cent - the highest in the world - unemployment of more than 80 per cent and chronic shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency.

Mugabe, 83, says the economy has been sabotaged by former colonial power Britain and other Western nations as payback for his government's controversial policy of seizing and redistributing white-owned commercial farms to landless blacks.

REUTERS GL VV1542