Blair backs S.Africa's Mbeki on Zimbabwe

PRETORIA, June 1 (Reuters) British Prime Minister Tony Blair said today he fully supported South Africa's efforts to mediate in Zimbabwe's escalating political crisis, saying any solution to the stand-off must come from within Africa.

Blair, speaking in South Africa's capital on the last day of his final tour of Africa as Britain's leader, said South African President Thabo Mbeki and his regional colleagues were best placed to encourage change by President Robert Mugabe's authoritarian government.

''The only thing that matters is not what I say, or what anybody else says, but what is happening to the people of Zimbabwe,'' Blair told a joint news conference with Mbeki.

''It is from within Zimbabwe and this region that change has got to come. And what we will do is support people like President Mbeki who are trying to bring about change.'' Southern African leaders have named Mbeki to mediate in Zimbabwe's crisis, where critics accuse Mugabe of a draconian crackdown against his political opponents led by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Zimbabwe police arrested and badly beat MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and other MDC members in March after they tried to attend a prayer rally, and opposition leaders and rights activists say the repression continues across the country.

Mugabe's government accuses the MDC of petrol bomb attacks and other violence as part of a ''terror'' campaign waged at the behest of Britain and other Western nations opposed to his policy of seizing white-owned farms to give to landless blacks.

Mbeki - who has tried and failed to bring Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF and the MDC to talks in the past - has said he believes the current mediation is going well, although there has as yet been little public sign of progress.

Human rights activists and some Western diplomats have reacted cautiously to Mbeki's mediation role, pointing out that he has long been accused of being too soft on Mugabe.

Blair, in a speech yesterday, said it was important to find a solution to Zimbabwe's problems before the country holds elections next year in which the 83-year-old Mugabe will be standing for a new five-year term.

Mugabe, Zimbabwe's sole ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, underscored the tensions this week when he told a graduating class of police officers that their main task was ''to thwart the subversive manoeuvres of those who engage in crimes of political violence''.

''I wish to call upon people of Zimbabwe to unite against the shameless British arm-twisting tactics being orchestrated through the MDC and the so-called civil groups,'' the official Herald newspaper quoted Mugabe as saying.

REUTERS DS RN2024