The South African President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, and five other southern African leaders will meet in Zimbabwe next week to discuss that country's land crisis.
Mr Mbeki and his counterparts from Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Angola and Namibia will hold talks on September 10th and 11th with Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and his cabinet.
Mr Mbeki's office said in a statement that the southern African leaders would also meet "with interest groups such as commercial farmers and war veterans".
The talks come a month after the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) acknowledged that Zimbabwe's crisis was causing concern in the region and appointed a committee of presidents to tackle the issue.
Zimbabwe has been in crisis since February last year, when war veterans seized hundreds of white-owned farms across the country.
A Zimbabwean farmers' union painted a bleak picture on Tuesday of fires ravaging white-owned farmland. Mr Mugabe has vowed to press ahead with the campaign of land seizures, saying it is immoral for white farmers to occupy 70 per cent of the country's best farmland while blacks are crowded on barren lands.
Zimbabwe's government yesterday accepted an offer of nearly one million hectares of farmland from white commercial farmers to help resolve the land dispute.
"Government looked at the spirit behind the offer, and welcomes the fact that some white commercial farmers appear to have turned a new leaf in their attitude towards the government land reform programme," said the Vice President, Mr Joseph Msika.
Under a scheme dubbed the Zimbabwe Joint Resettlement Initiative (ZJRI), the white farmers offered 531 farms.
Zimbabwe's troubles have raised fears among its neighbours of a spillover effect that could damage regional economic growth.
Mr Mugabe suffered several defeats at the SADC's summit in Malawi last month. His delegation sought public support for the land seizures, but SADC leaders were not sympathetic and appointed the committee of presidents to seek an end to the stalemate.
Harare has said it wants the former colonial power Britain to help resolve the land problem at a special Commonwealth meeting due to open today in the Nigerian capital.
Although insisting they were going to Abuja with an open mind, Zimbabwean officials said they wanted the talks to focus on the land issue and nothing else.
Zimbabwe accuses Britain of reneging on its promise to fund a land reform programme, an undertaking it made during the 1979 peace agreement which marked the end of the guerrilla war of independence from Britain.
The government says Britain is trying to shirk its responsibility by raising "extraneous" matters such as the rule of law, treatment of the judiciary and media, and the general political environment.
Britain says it has paid £44 million sterling to Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 for land reforms, but the government considers this "far too short of what is required".