JOHANNESBURG (AFP) — South Africa will host a regional summit this weekend aimed at breaking a political impasse in Zimbabwe on forming a unity government, the foreign ministry said.
Leaders from the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) would also discuss the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo at Sunday's summit, said South African foreign ministry spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa and the SADC secretariat.
"It's on Sunday," he said, but added that the location had not yet been decided. "We are still working on the venue," Mamoepa told AFP.
A SADC defence and security ministerial troika meeting would be held on Wednesday in Maputo to prepare the agenda for the weekend summit, a SADC statement added. Zimbabwe and DR Congo are each SADC members.
Fresh fighting meanwhile broke out Tuesday between forces loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda and local militiamen in DR Congo's eastern Ruthshuru region, according to the UN.
Sunday's summit would seek to find a solution to Zimbabwe's power-sharing deadlock between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
The two leaders signed a deal on September 15, but efforts to create a unity government have stalled over disputes on who will control the most important ministries.
"We are hoping the Sunday meeting is the final negotiation to start a new chapter," said Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
"We are expecting the equitable distribution of key ministries," he told AFP. "The people are suffering and we should start acting to make sure we alleviate the problems facing the people."
South African President Kgalema Motlanthe and other key regional leaders have already held two summits over the last three weeks to try to press the rivals into a compromise.
At their last meeting in Harare on October 27, Mugabe and Tsvangirai agreed only to bring the dispute before an emergency SADC summit.
A statement released after the talks said they remained divided over the cabinet posts, especially the home affairs ministry which oversees the police.
The new summit aims to bring together all the leaders of southern Africa to save the power-sharing deal, seen as the best hope for ending months of political turmoil and halting Zimbabwe's stunning economic collapse.
Nearly half of Zimbabwe's population needs international food aid, according to the United Nations, as the country buckles under the world's highest rate of inflation, last estimated at 231 million percent.
The regional bloc has tried for seven years to press Mugabe into a compromise with Tsvangirai, but its members are deeply divided over Zimbabwe.
Some leaders are strong allies of Mugabe, who is still respected as a liberation hero, while others blame him for the country's economic ruin, which has caused waves of migrants to cross its borders to seek work.
Botswana President Ian Khama, one of the region's toughest critics of Mugabe, on Monday called for an internationally supervised rerun of the presidential poll in Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai won the first round presidential vote in March, when the MDC gained a majority in parliament, forcing Mugabe's ZANU-PF into the minority for the first time since independence in 1980.
But Tsvangirai pulled out of a June run-off, accusing Mugabe's regime of orchestrating attacks that left more than 100 of his supporters dead.
Amnesty International released a report last week that found a total of 180 people had been killed and about 9,000 injured in political violence since March, most of them MDC supporters.
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