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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt: An African Union summit on Tuesday adopted a resolution calling for dialogue between Zimbabwe's political foes and a national unity government following President Robert Mugabe's widely discredited re-election.
The AU agreed "to encourage President Robert Mugabe and the Movement for Democractic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai to initiate dialogue with a view to promoting peace, stability," according to the resolution.
It also decided "to support the call for the creation of a government of national unity, to support SADC (Southern African Development Community) facilitation."
A senior official said the resolution was adopted by the meeting of heads of state "after more than two hours of debate."
The resolution "appeals to states and all parties concerned to refrain from any action that may impact negatively."
The SADC regional body has already been leading mediation efforts between Mugabe and opposition leader Tsvangirai.
In Harare, MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said his opposition group would carefully examine the resolution.
"We are not commenting on that issue until we carefully study and understand the resolution. We need to understand the resolution first, then we will issue a full statement," he told AFP.
According to an AU source attending the talks, Nigeria and Senegal both want the government of national unity "to be based on the result of the first round of the presidential (polls)," which Tsvangirai won.
Senegalese President Abdulaye Wade "spoke for more than an hour, saying that the second round was void and that he had tried to convince Robert Mugabe not to go through with the poll," the source said.
"Nigeria was also very firm about denouncing the second round and said it did not reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people."
Botswana called for Zimbabwe to be suspended from the AU and the SADC, in a move which a diplomat said was aimed at pressuring Mugabe to accept a power-sharing deal.
"Botswana's position is that the outcome of these elections does not confer legitimacy on the government of President Mugabe," Botswana's Vice President Mompati S. Merafhe told the summit.
"In our considered view it therefore follows that the representatives of the current 'government' in Zimbabwe should be excluded from attending SADC and AU meetings."
The AU diplomat said that "the feeling of several heads of state is that the sharing should be done with Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister, but that's not explicitly stated in the resolution."
Mugabe won a widely discredited runoff election on Friday that was marred by violence which led opposition leader Tsvangirai, who won the first round, to pull out ahead of the contest.
The diplomat said the resolution consists of three main points: dialogue between Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and Tsvangirai's MDC, a national unity government, and support for SADC's mediation efforts.
But the text does not specify whether the opposition would be given the role of president or prime minister with executive powers.
Mugabe, 84, was attending the summit in Egypt after he was sworn in for a sixth term, having been declared the winner of Friday's election runoff with more than 85 percent of the vote in a one-man race.
The opposition number two, Tendai Biti, said earlier in a statement that Mugabe's holding of a one-man election killed off any prospect of a negotiated political settlement and denied any talks were taking place.
"While the MDC has pursued dialogue in a bid to establish a government of national healing before June 4, the sham election on June 27, 2008, totally and completely exterminated any prospect of a negotiated settlement."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pledged to work to broker a solution, repeating his view that the one-man election that gave Mugabe another term lacked legitimacy.
Washington announced on Monday that it was preparing to present a draft sanctions resolution to the UN Security Council and urged African leaders to listen to their own election observers.
"The vote fell short of the African Union's standards of democratic elections," the AU observers said in a statement issued in Harare on Monday.
European governments are also looking at a raft of sanctions, French foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said as Paris assumed the rotating EU presidency.
The new measures, which come on top of 2007 sanctions, could include slapping visa bans and asset freezes on members of Mugabe's entourage, Chevallier said. - AFP/de
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