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HARARE: Robert Mugabe said on Friday he is only open to negotiations on an end to Zimbabwe's political crisis if he is accepted as the country's president following his widely condemned one-man election.
"I am the president of the republic of Zimbabwe and that is the reality," Mugabe told supporters at Harare airport after flying back home from an African Union summit in Egypt.
"Everybody has to accept that if they want dialogue."
The 84-year-old leader said "there shall never be acceptance to us of anything else but the meaning and significance of the vote passed on the 27th of June."
Speaking of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), he said, "let them not delude themselves into ever believing we will reverse that, never ever."
He added that "if they agree on that and we are satisfied, then we shall go into dialogue and listen to them by way of ideas. Those votes can never be thrown away as the British want. They are mad, insane."
Mugabe, who has often sought to portray his rival and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as a stooge of former colonial power Britain, said last Friday's run-off "was a total rejection of British policy towards Zimbabwe."
Tsvangirai boycotted the vote, citing rising violence against his supporters that he blamed on Mugabe thugs and which left some 90 dead and thousands injured.
Mugabe arrived back home to a hero's welcome by thousands of supporters on Friday following the AU summit, where he avoided serious censure over his country's political crisis.
AU leaders shunned calls for his suspension or the imposition of sanctions and instead passed a resolution calling for the formation of a national unity government.
While Western powers have pushed for sanctions following Mugabe's re-election, South African President Thabo Mbeki has warned against imposing a solution from the outside.
Mbeki, the regionally appointed mediator for Zimbabwe, has faced criticism over his quiet diplomacy approach to the crisis.
Mugabe has however expressed gratitude to Mbeki, and on Friday reiterated his call for the South African leader to remain in his role as mediator.
"We are happy that Mbeki continues to be the facilitator," Mugabe said. "He has done nothing wrong."
- AFP/jk
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