Southern African leaders will hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss Zimbabwe's crisis, but the region's designated mediator, South African President Thabo Mbeki, will not attend, officials said.
The meeting in Swaziland's capital Mbabane was called by the 14-nation regional body, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as international pressure mounted on President Robert Mugabe to call off a presidential election on Friday.
The leaders of a SADC security troika of Tanzania, Angola and Swaziland would attend the meeting, the Tanzanian government said in a statement.
It said Mbeki had been invited, together with Zambian leader Levy Mwanawasa, but Mbeki's spokesman said he would not go.
The South African president has been negotiating between Mugabe and Zimbabwe's opposition since last year but has been widely criticised for being ineffective and too soft on Mugabe.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who has withdrawn from the election, urged the United Nations to isolate Mugabe and called for a peacekeeping force in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe has refused to call off the vote, shrugging off mounting international pressure including Monday's unprecedented U.N. Security Council condemnation of violence. It said a free and fair run-off election on Friday was impossible.
The Tanzanian statement said: "The meeting will discuss how the SADC and its troika organ on politics, defence and security can help Zimbabwe to get out of its current state of conflict."
Mbeki spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga told Reuters: "We are not going to Swaziland. We have had no invitation to go to any meeting, especially Swaziland." He said Mbeki also had no plans to visit Zimbabwe this week.
The Zimbabwe government also said it had not been invited.
"We do not even know there is a SADC summit on Zimbabwe in Mbabane," Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said.
INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION
