Zimbabwe's ruling party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change will begin negotiations on Tuesday on a power-sharing deal that could end the political crisis, the opposition and diplomatic sources said.
President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai signed a deal on Monday that committed the ruling ZANU-PF and two factions of the MDC to two weeks of negotiations with South African mediators.
"There was convergence among all the parties that the dialogue had to start as soon as the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) was done, hence the resumption of that process today," an MDC official said on condition of anonymity.
A diplomatic source close to the talks said they would start on Tuesday in South Africa's capital, Pretoria. The source said neither Mugabe nor Tsvangirai would attend the opening round.
The government and the opposition had been deadlocked over talks since Mugabe was re-elected on June 27 in a second-round poll boycotted by Tsvangirai because of violence against his supporters. Mugabe blames the opposition for the bloodshed.
The main goal of the Pretoria talks will be the creation of a government of national unity, though the two sides differ on who should lead it and how long it should stay in power.
Pressure on the two sides to share power came from the African Union and the Southern African Development Community, concerned by the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe that has flooded neighboring states with millions of refugees.
The European Union on Tuesday increased pressure on Mugabe, saying it had agreed additional sanctions on Zimbabwe.
An EU official said at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels that 37 people and four companies would be added to the EU's Zimbabwe sanctions list.
MEDIATION PROCESS
The breakthrough between Zimbabwe's rivals appeared to follow South African President Thabo Mbeki's agreement late last week to expand the mediation process to include the African Union, the United Nations and other SADC officials.
Mbeki has been mediating in the crisis for more than a year and had been increasingly criticized, especially by Tsvangirai's MDC, which accused him of taking too soft a line with Mugabe.
Tsvangirai had previously refused to enter formal talks unless government militias stopped violence he says has killed 120 of his supporters. He also wanted Mugabe to recognize his victory in the first round of the presidential poll on March 29.
The talks are expected to be tense and possibly acrimonious. The MDC has accused Mugabe and ZANU-PF of violating human rights and rigging elections.
Tsvangirai has been arrested at least half a dozen times by security forces in the past two years, and he was beaten along with dozens of supporters in an aborted anti-government protest last year.
"This is just the first step on a journey whose duration and success is dependent on the sincerity and good faith of all parties involved," Tsvangirai said in a statement on Tuesday.
Mugabe, 84, has dismissed the MDC as a puppet of the West and vowed never to let it take power. The president, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, has also insisted that the opposition accept his landslide victory last month.
Zimbabwe's economic collapse under Mugabe's rule has plunged the once prosperous country into inflation of at least 2 million percent, crippling food and fuel shortages and 80 percent unemployment.
(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander in Brussels; Writing by Paul Simao and Marius Bosch; Editing by Tim Pearce)
