WASHINGTON (Sapa-AFP) - The international community should ask President Robert Mugabe to step down and send peacekeepers to Zimbabwe to oversee free and fair elections there, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga said Tuesday.
"Do we have conditions for free and fair elections in Zimbabwe at the moment? The answer is no, you don't," Odinga said of a June 27 run-off presidential vote between Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
"It's already been pre-rigged," Odinga said, citing beatings and arrests, arson, the repeated detention of Tsvangirai and over 100,000 soldiers already casting ballots under the watchful eyes of police.
"It would be best for the international community to insist for Mugabe to step down, and send an international peacekeeping force" into Zimbabwe to oversee free and fair elections there, he said.
Odinga criticized fellow African leaders for failing to speak out against the violence plaguing Zimbabwe ahead of the presidential polls.
"Zimbabwe is an eyesore on the African continent ... an example of how not to do it. I'm sad that so many heads of state in Africa have remained quiet when disaster is looming in Zimbabwe," Odinga said during a trip to Washington.
Mugabe has threatened to arrest opposition leaders amid mounting violence in his country ahead of this month's elections run-off in which he faces the most serious challenge to his 28-year rule.
Mugabe has blamed the opposition for the upsurge in violence, but the United Nations has said the president's supporters are responsible for most of it.
A senior UN official, Haile Menkerios, met with Mugabe in Harare on Tuesday, as part of a trip to assess the political situation in the country.
The opposition, led by Tsvangirai, has said more than 60 of their supporters have been killed since the first round of the presidential elections in March.
Odinga told a discussion run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies here that he had been "declared enemy number one in Zimbabwe" after he criticized the country's leaders during a speech in Cape Town last week.
"African leaders should be able to stand up and say what is happening in Zimbabwe is unacceptable," he urged.
The South African government also needs to come out strongly against Mugabe and impunity in Zimbabwe, he added.
