20110318
reuters

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe is sliding into a police state and regional leaders should intervene to save the unity government, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said on Friday as police banned a weekend rally he was due to address.

"It appears to me that the civilian authority is being undermined and we are fast deteriorating into a police state," Tsvangirai said.

Tensions are rising in the southern African country over policy differences between Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF.

These include ZANU-PF's drive to nationalise the country's mines, a move the MDC has urged caution on as the long-battered economy shows some signs of recovery.

Tsvangirai and Mugabe were forced into a coalition two years ago after a disputed poll in 2008, which led to mass violence, a flood of refugees into South Africa and a deeper economic crisis in the resource-rich and fertile country.

The slow pace of pledged democratic reforms is another a source of friction as the security forces remain staunch Mugabe loyalists, and this has led to violent clashes between supporters of the two parties.

Tsvangirai told journalists on arrival from a regional trip that he had warned leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc that the political violence that gripped the country in the past could flare again.

He accused security authorities of arbitrary arrests and said Zimbabwe was again in a "siege mood".