Police in Zimbabwe said yesterday they would crack down on escalating political violence by using powers that the opposition said threatened free elections. The powers in question date from the era of white rule.
"We will maintain law and order," the Police Commissioner, Mr Augustine Chihuri, said in Harare.
The police statement came as ministers began talks in London on President Robert Mugabe's demand that Britain pay for land he plans to take from white farmers for redistribution to blacks. Last night the talks broke up without agreement.
Opposition parties called the new powers "draconian" and said they jeopardised the chances of holding free and fair parliamentary elections, which are due by August.
Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), rejected police statements that his party should share the blame for violence. "It is not correct to say both parties are fanning violence. It is only our supporters being killed," he said. "Free and fair elections are impossible if parties cannot freely organise and move around the country," he added.
Mr Chihuri said police have invoked three sections of the Law and Order Maintenance Act giving them power to restrict the movement of party supporters and ban public gatherings that threaten law and order.
The act was drafted in the 1960s and was used by Rhodesia's white minority government against black nationalist movements fighting for independence.
"In short, it is illegal to ferry supporters to meetings, public gatherings or processions unless such events are being officiated by presidents of political parties," Mr Chihuri said. "Abductions have to stop. Assaults have to stop. Intimidation has to stop and we are going to see to it that it stops," he said.
At least 14 people - farmers, farm workers and opposition supporters - have been killed over the past nine weeks as militant supporters of Mugabe's ZANU-PF party have invaded hundreds of white-owned farms.
Zimbabwe veterans' leader Mr Chenjerai Hunzvi said his followers would remain on the farms until the issue of land redistribution was resolved. "Our stance on land has not changed. We want the question resolved. We have pledged that our members end any violence and we are now discussing the way forward," Mr Hunzvi said.
"When we are ready to move we will let you know," he said, before entering talks with the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU), which groups most of the country's 4,500 mainly white commercial farmers.
Tobacco sales remained low yesterday on the second day of the annual selling season, with fewer than 2,000 bales delivered. Farmers are withholding deliveries to protest against the farm invasions and to press for the devaluation of the currency.
Meanwhile, talks in London between the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, and a Zimbabwean ministerial delegation broke up without any agreement on a £36 million British aid package to fund land reform.
During their negotiations Mr Cook made clear that he was not prepared to release the cash until he received a cast-iron commitment that the violence, which has claimed at least 12 lives in the past two months, would stop.
At a press conference, he said that while the Zimbabwean team headed by local government minister Mr John Nkomo had given the "clear impression" they wanted an end to violence, there had been no commitment.
"An end to the violence and the occupations is the essential next step. In the event that these conditions are met, we are willing to enter into dialogue . . . with the government of Zimbabwe on how to take forward our commitment to fund land reform," he said.