U.S. & World

HARARE, Zimbabwe (CBS News) ― Zimbabwe's opposition leader emerged from his refuge at the Dutch Embassy on Wednesday to call for African leaders to guide talks to end Zimbabwe's crisis, saying a presidential runoff later this week was no solution.

Morgan Tsvangirai said the goal of the talks would be forming a coalition transitional authority for his country. He said talks could not begin until there was an end to attacks on his supporters, blamed on President Robert Mugabe's government, and a release of "political prisoners," including top opposition figure Tendai Biti, who is jailed on treason charges.

"What is important is that both parties must realize the country is burning and the only way is to sit down and find a way out of it," Tsvangirai told reporters at his home in Harare after leaving the embassy. He looked relaxed, smiling and joking often.

Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change opposition party, had fled to the Dutch Embassy on Sunday following the announcement of his withdrawal from the runoff. He sought refuge after getting a tip that soldiers were headed to his home. In the past three months, soldiers and armed gangs have killed dozens of Mugabe's opponents.

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric asked Tsvangirai in a phone interview Tuesday what he would say to his supporters who had seen his candidacy as a real possibility for change.

"My message is very, very simple. We went to an election in March. We had a relatively peaceful election and the people spoke. We won the parliamentary election, we won the presidential election. We want to thank our supporters for that support. What is happening at this runoff election is not an election," Tsvangirai said.

President Mugabe, by all indications intent on extending his nearly three-decade rule, insists that Friday's vote will go ahead. Mugabe has grown only more defiant in the face of growing international pressure.

"The election is not a solution," Tsvangirai said Wednesday. "What is a solution is some sort of transitional process to address the critical issues facing the country.

"We are making proposals Mugabe has to accept."

While Tsvangirai did not spell out how the transitional body would work, he has insisted in the past that he lead, and Mugabe have no role in, any coalition. Mugabe, though, is refusing to yield power. Tsvangirai's claim to leadership is based on his having come first in a field of four in the first round of presidential voting March 29, though official results said he did not win the 50 percent plus one vote necessary to avoid a runoff.

Tsvangirai's party and its allies also won control of Parliament in the March voting - the first time since independence from Britain in 1980 that Mugabe's ZANU-PF party failed to win a parliamentary majority.

Wednesday, Tsvangirai said he was asking the African Union, whose heads of state were to hold a regular summit in Egypt next week, to take over mediation that so far has been in the hands of South African President Thabo Mbeki and a southern African regional group. Tsvangirai had previously called on Mbeki to step aside, accusing him of bias in Mugabe's favor and saying his "quiet diplomacy" was not working.

Tsvangirai said the AU mediation he was proposing cannot "be a continuation of talks and talks about talks that have been largely fruitless for several years. The time for actions is now. The people and the country can wait no longer. We need to show leadership."

Earlier Wednesday, a commentary by Tsvangirai was published in the British newspaper The Guardian in which he called for U.N. peacekeepers to help prepare the way for new elections. Asked about that in Harare, Tsvangirai said: "What do you do when you don't have guns and the people are being brutalized out there?"

He stressed he was not calling for military intervention.

In The Guardian, Tsvangirai acknowledged calling for international intervention was sensitive, but said it would offer "the best chance the people of Zimbabwe would get to see their views recorded fairly and justly."

"We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force," he said in The Guardian. "Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not troublemakers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns."

On Wednesday, officials from Tsvangirai's party said police raided one of their provincial offices. Scores of opposition activists, including high-ranking party members, have been attacked or killed. The MDC's No. 2 official, Biti, has been jailed since earlier this month on treason charges - which can carry the death penalty.

"I have been arrested; I've been stopped at roadblocks," Tsvangirai told Couric on Tuesday. "I have been treated like a common criminal ... and not as a leading contender in this campaign."

Regional heads of state, meanwhile, were meeting in Swaziland in hopes of finding a solution for Zimbabwe.

The Southern African Development Community meeting, though, did not include South African President Mbeki, who was appointed by the bloc more than a year ago to mediate between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

Mbeki has refused to publicly denounce Mugabe even as other African leaders step up their criticism, saying confrontation could backfire.

Mbeki's spokesman said late Tuesday that Mbeki was not going to Swaziland because he is not a member of the security committee of the regional bloc, which called the meeting.

South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad told reporters that South Africa may yet send an envoy to neighboring Swaziland - the countries' capitals are a few hours drive apart.

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who has also been trying to broker an agreement, said Tuesday that Mbeki was trying to persuade Mugabe and Tsvangirai to share power in a transitional government with Mugabe as president and Tsvangirai as prime minister. Wade was also proposing that Tsvangirai take a position junior to Mugabe's, but not that the coalition be considered merely transitional.

Neither proposal appeared to have been embraced by the rivals.

South African officials have offered no details of Mbeki's mediation agenda. Pahad rejected criticism.

"We can only say mediation fails if Zimbabwe gets totally engulfed in a state of civil war. It's not there yet," Pahad told reporters in South Africa's capital Wednesday. "There are three more days to go (before the vote) and the situation demands we do everything possible to get Zimbabweans to agree on the way forward."

Tsvangirai wrote in The Guardian that Mbeki's approach "sought to massage a defeated dictator rather than show him the door and prod him towards it."

Meanwhile, President Bush said Wednesday that the presidential runoff election in Zimbabwe is a sham.

Bush said that the people of Zimbabwe deserve better and just want to express themselves at the ballot box.

Bush said, "Friday's elections appear to be a sham. You can't have free elections when a candidate is not allowed to campaign without fear of intimidation."

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)