Morgan threatens to pull out of Zimbabwe power-sharing deal

HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai threatened Sunday to pull out of a power-sharing deal aimed at resolving the country’s crisis if President Robert Mugabe moved ahead with plans to hand key ministries to his party.

“If they (ZANU-PF) do it that way, we have no right to be part of such an arrangement,” Tsvangirai told a rally in Harare attended by about 8,000 of his supporters in his first public reaction to Mugabe’s shock announcement.

“The people have suffered. But if it means suffering the more in order for them to get what is at stake, then so be it. We will renegotiate until an agreement is reached but that does not mean we will compromise for the sake of it,” he said in a mixture of his native Shona and English languages. “We had thought that they would be reasonable and equitable in power-sharing. If you say all the 15 ministries which are key are mine (referring to ruling ZANU-PF), we (in the MDC) disagree,” he said.