World News Story

09 January 2009 00:43 BST

Armed police bar MDC from lodging election petition

Lawyers representing Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)party have been blocked from entering the country's high courts and filing a petition over the recent elections by armed police.

According to the MDC, its candidate Morgan Tsvangirai came out on top in the ballot, although the country's president Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party have yet to concede defeat and give up their power.

This has prompted the opposition to attempt to file an urgent legal suit with the high courts in the capital Harare calling for the full election results to be made available to the public.

However, lawyer Alec Muchadehama has been blocked from entering the building by a number of armed policemen wearing Zanu-PF shirts.

"No one is going to enter," Mr Muchadehama was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

"They say they are going to call the riot police."

While international observers believe that Mr Tsvangirai won most of the votes cast, it is thought that he may not have won enough to achieve an outright victory against Mr Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980.

Earlier this week South African president Thabo Mbeki argued that, for now, Zimbabwe does not require any international assistance, although the MDC has called on the United Nations to intervene should the country's government undertake a violent crackdown of opposition in the case of a runoff election.