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HARARE : Zimbabwe opposition chief Morgan Tsvangirai quit the country's presidential run-off on Sunday, saying violence had made a fair vote impossible and almost certainly handing victory to veteran leader Robert Mugabe.
"We in the MDC cannot ask them to cast their vote on the 27th when that vote would cost them their lives," Tsvangirai told reporters. "We will no longer participate in the violent illegitimate sham of an election process."
The opposition chief said Mugabe had "declared war by saying that the bullet has replaced the ballot", referring to the president's earlier threats to fight to keep the opposition out of power.
"We believe an election that reflects the will of the people is impossible," he said, as he appealed to the United Nations, African Union and regional body SADC to "intervene and stop the genocide".
Tsvangirai added he would announce a decision on his next moves on Wednesday, leaving open the possibility, however slight, that he could change his mind.
"If by Wednesday there is a way out of this (wave of violence) we will probably change that decision," he said.
Sunday's decision almost certainly handed victory by default to Mugabe, 84, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980.
In its first reaction, Mugabe's ZANU-PF party said Tsvangirai had quit the presidential run-off election "to avoid a humiliating defeat" and that he "had no other option."
"He is aware that they did not do enough preparations and spent a lot of time outside the country meeting people who do not matter," said party spokesman Patrick Chinamasa, referring to the weeks Tsvangirai spent out of the country following the first round of the vote in March.
The MDC leader said Sunday that South African President Thabo Mbeki had made no proposal to him about a national unity government that could have lifted Zimbabwe out of its crisis.
"You can't say President Mbeki is going to propose a government of national unity when it has not been put to us," Tsvangirai said.
Mbeki is the regionally appointed mediator for Zimbabwe and traveled to the country last week to hold separate meetings with both Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
The approach to the run-off had been tense, with the MDC saying authorities had unleashed a terror campaign and that some 70 of its supporters have been killed since the March 29 first round.
He spoke after hundreds of stick-wielding youths gathered Sunday at the venue of his party's main pre-election rally, and following an MDC meeting to decide whether to withdraw from the election.
Up to 1,000 youths gathered at the rally grounds in the capital Harare before moving on to the nearby headquarters of the ruling ZANU-PF party, witnesses and AFP journalists said.
Police officers and election observers had taken up positions nearby.
Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in the March first round of the vote -- and the ruling party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence.
But official results showed the MDC leader failed to achieve an outright majority of votes needed to become head of state without a run-off.
Tsvangirai had said he would participate in the run-off under protest since he claimed to have crossed the 50 percent threshold in the first round.
Mugabe is accused by critics of leading the once model economy to ruin and trampling on human rights. The country has the world's highest inflation rate and its currency -- once at par with the British pound -- is in freefall.
Major food shortages have contributed to the population's woes.
Before Tsvangirai's announcement, MDC party leaders met to debate whether to push ahead and contest the run-off amid the violence.
The MDC showed signs of deep divisions heading into the meeting, but Tsvangirai said afterward the decision to withdraw was unanimous.
The party has faced major obstacles while campaigning. Tsvangirai has been detained five times and the party's number two, Tendai Biti, is in jail on subversion and vote-rigging charges and faces the death penalty.
Mugabe has threatened to arrest opposition leaders over the violence, though the United Nations has said supporters of the president were to blame for the bulk of the bloodshed and unrest.
The veteran leader has remained defiant in the face of criticism over conditions ahead of the vote. On Friday he said "only God" could remove him from office.
He had pledged the opposition would never come to power in his lifetime, and vowed to fight to keep it from happening.
- AFP /ls
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