Mugabe to name new cabinet, says last was 'worst in history'

Mugabe to name new cabinet, says last was 'worst in history'

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• Minister faces arrest over stolen cattle

• Minister wants culpable homicide conviction quashed

• Minister sped off after hitting pedestrian

By Nelson Banya

ZIMBABWE President Robert Mugabe will form a new government soon but he says the main opposition MDC does not want to join the new administration, state media reported on Wednesday.

"We shall soon be setting up a government. The MDC does not want to come in apparently," the state-owned Herald newspaper quoted Mugabe as telling government officials on Tuesday after opening Parliament.

Mugabe, who was booed and jeered by opposition members when he opened the assembly, has said he is still hopeful for agreement to be reached in post-election power-sharing talks with Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC aimed at ending a political crisis.

The talks were still talking place, Zimbabwe's new parliamentary speaker Lovemore Moyo, an MDC official, said on Wednesday.

"The talks are on," Moyo told South Africa's Talk Radio 702. He also said the heckling of Mugabe was regrettable but reflected MDC frustrations over the political deadlock in the country.

Mugabe said: "The MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) does not want to come in apparently. This time they have been promised by the British that sanctions would be more devastating, that in six months' time the government will collapse.

"I do not know when that day will come. I wish (MDC leader Morgan) Tsvangirai well on that day.”

A deadlock in talks between Mugabe and Tsvangirai over how to share power has undermined hopes for an agreement that might allow Zimbabwe to recover from its devastating economic decline.

The world's highest inflation rate of over 11-million percent and severe food, fuel and foreign currency shortages have driven millions to neighbouring countries.

Mugabe's critics say his policies helped wreck the economy, in particular the seizure of white-owned commercial farms to give to inexperienced black farmers. But Mugabe’s government points to a range of sanctions imposed by western countries as the root of the economic decline.

Mugabe criticised his former Cabinet strongly on Wednesday.

"The Cabinet that I had was the worst in history. They [only] look at themselves, they are unreliable, but not all of them. The people are suffering...," the Herald quoted him as saying.

Mugabe was re-elected unopposed in a June vote boycotted by Tsvangirai because of violence and condemned around the world.

The opposition party said four MPs -- elected in March elections in which the MDC gained the most seats -- were arrested at Parliament on Tuesday on what it called trumped-up political violence charges. - Reuters
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