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Monday, December 17, 2001 - Web posted at 8:26:04 am GMT

VICTORIA FALLS/HARARE - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe declared "real war" on his political foes, targeting his main opposition rival who was hauled before police on Saturday for the second time in two days.

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Saturday he had been called to the police station and charged with possessing a two-way radio without a licence. Police seized the radio and briefly held Tsvangirai on Friday.

He was released at 4 p.m. after making a statement, his lawyer Innocent Chagonda said.

Mugabe, who has accused Tsvangirai and his party of being puppets of white interests, vowed his ruling party would operate like an army to defeat the opposition and help him win presidential elections due next March.

Last year's parliamentary elections were a mere soccer match, Mugabe said at the end of a three-day conference of his ZANU-PF party.

At least 31 people, most of them opposition supporters, were killed in political violence before the June 2000 polls.

"What we are now headed for is a real war, a revolutionary war," Mugabe said, launching his presidential campaign.

"We have to move like a military machine and you must prepare your own unit to move forward. This is no longer just a contest. This is a revolutionary war."

Mugabe -- described by one of his officials at the conference as "Zimbabwe's light in this hour of darkness" -- was endorsed unanimously as ZANU-PF's presidential candidate for the 2002 elections.

The 77-year-old leader faces the stiffest challenge of his career in the election from Tsvangirai, who told the BBC in a telephone interview earlier on Saturday that international pressure on Mugabe should be maintained.

"International solidarity and help is important in laying down clearly to Mugabe and his cronies that such behaviour will not be accepted in a democratic society," he said.

ZANU-PF narrowly defeated the increasingly popular MDC in last year's general elections. As Zimbabwe's economic and political crisis deepens, observers say Mugabe will find it difficult to win the presidential vote.

Mugabe urged ZANU-PF to mend divisions and strengthen weak party structures to hone his election efforts.

"Wherever you are, you are party soldiers and no one should leave this conference calling themselves soccer players," Mugabe said. "We must see you ready as commanders with your units... when the day comes for them to fire the bullet, the ballot, they must fire it properly."

The ruling party appointed Youth and Employment Creation Minister Elliot Manyika as its new political commissar. Manyika, dressed in military fatigues, said the MDC had been identified as the number one enemy.

"Our machinery is now sharp and we are saying to the MDC, here we come, we are going to attack you. We are rearing to go. We are standing under the flag of war," he said.

Manyika replaced Border Gezi, a former minister who died in an accident earlier this year.

The MDC has accused ZANU-PF of training militants under the guise of a new national service programme and says Mugabe, in power for 21 years, is desperate to cling on as he faces an electorate struggling in an economic crisis blamed widely on government mismanagement.

Mugabe blames the crisis on Western governments which oppose his controversial programme to seize white-owned farms for black resettlement and says Tsvangirai is a puppet of his white opponents.

He has vowed to stick to his land drive despite the threat of sanctions against his ruling elite. Nampa-Reuters

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