JOHANNESBURG (Sapa-AP) - Zimbabwe's opposition leader should return home to lead his campaign for president, the U.S. ambassador to the southern African country said Tuesday.
Ambassador James McGee, speaking to The Associated Press in South Africa, said he understood the opposition's security concerns - it claims its leader Morgan Tsvangirai is the target of a government assassination plot. But he said Zimbabweans who have been attacked for supporting Tsvangirai need him in the country to lead them.
"There are a lot of people in Zimbabwe who have paid the ultimate price by voting for Morgan Tsvangirai," McGee said. "We believe that as a strong leader, he should be back showing his people that he cares every bit as much for them as they do for him." Opposition and independent human rights groups and McGee say that opposition supporters have been targeted in a campaign of violence aimed at ensuring President Robert Mugabe wins a planned June 27 presidential runoff.
Tsvangirai has been out of Zimbabwe since shortly after the March 29 first round of presidential voting. He plans to return to Zimbabwe to campaign for the runoff election once security measures are in place, his aides have said.
Attempts to reach Tsvangirai's spokesman for comment Tuesday were not immediately successful. Tsvangirai was in Johannesburg Tuesday.
Tsvangirai cancelled his return to his homeland over the weekend because of alleged assassination threats. Tuesday, a Zimbabwe government newspaper carried ruling party denials the military was plotting to kill Tsvangirai.
The assassination allegation has "no foundation whatsoever except in his own dreams," Tuesday's The Herald newspaper, a government and ruling party mouthpiece, quoted ruling ZANU-PF party spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira as saying. Tsvangirai "is dreaming things that are not existent in Zimbabwe. No one in ZANU-PF or government has any intention of killing him."
Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga was quoted in the same article as calling the allegation "stupid."
Tsvangirai says he won the March 29 first round outright. But official results and those compiled by independent monitors indicate he did not win the 50 percent plus one vote required to avoid a runoff.
The violence poses serious questions about whether the runoff can be free and fair.
"There's no political space in Zimbabwe for a free, fair runoff," U.S. envoy McGee said Tuesday, calling on Zimbabwe's neighbours and other African countries to send 1,000-1,500 observers to Zimbabwe now to help ensure security during the campaign, voting and vote-counting.
McGee also said Zimbabwe's neighbours need to take a tougher line with long-time ruler Mugabe.
"We tried quiet diplomacy and quiet diplomacy does not seem to be working," McGee said. "You still have a regime that is out to do one thing and that is to remain in power."
McGee said Mugabe's neighbors need to make clear that "if you steal an election, there's a price to pay. You're going to be isolated by your neighbors, you're going to be isolated by the international community."
South African President Thabo Mbeki is leading regional efforts to mediate between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. He has advocated a quiet approach, saying confronting Mugabe could backfire.
In a statement Monday, Human Rights Watch urged the African Union to send election observers and human rights monitors to Zimbabwe to ensure free and fair voting June 27.
"The African Union should publicly demand that the Zimbabwean government halt its campaign of violence, torture and intimidation," Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said. "Unless the current situation is reversed, more civilians will be brutalized and die."
The African Union, an intergovernmental organization of 53 African nations, has struggled to agree on what it should to do to help Zimbabwe handle its political crisis.
The New York-based rights watchdog said Zimbabwe's ruling party is responsible for almost all the violence. Human Rights Watch said that since the March vote, it had documented at least 27 deaths.
