afrol News, 16 April - United States President George Bush and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday held a telephone discussion, expressing concern about the political crisis in Zimbabwe.

"The situation in Zimbabwe needs to be resolved peacefully and soon. It's gone on for too long," a White House Spokesperson Gordon Johndroe said.

US authorities were uncomfortable with Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's (ZEC) continuous failure to publish the results of the 29 March presidential election.

Zimbabwe's High Court on Monday dismissed an opposition petition demanding the immediate release of the results. The court said the results should be published after an investigation into reported anomalies.

ZEC officials said until the completion of a partial recount at the weekend, the results would not be published.

Mr Bush and Mr Ban, who also spoke on other issues, including those relating to Darfur, spoke ahead of the UN Security Council meetings on Africa.

The two leaders talked about efforts "to speed up the flow of peacekeers" into the conflict-ridden Sudanese province of Darfur.

They are believed to be working on getting the African contingent in as soon as possible, and then follow that on non-African contingents of the peacekeeping operation. The Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir would be pushed to allow the expeditious deployment.

Meanwhile, the leader of Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai has said he would only take part in a presidential election run-off if the Southern African Development Community was allowed to oversee every stage of the count.

Mr Tsvangirai said the country's current circumstances do not allow a free and fair vote. MDC officials said while two of their party's supporters had been killed, 200 others were hospitalised mainly due to attacks by the ruling party militias.

Tsvangirai's party's call for a nation-wide strike over the delay in publishing the results on Tuesday had received little support, with banks, shops and offices operating normal services.

Last night, more than 50 MDC activists were reportedly arrested by the police.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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