Zimbabwe: Zanu-PF insists on elections before year's end

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's party has renewed its calls for new elections this year, rejecting a timeline that his own negotiators hammered out last week, a state daily reported. 'The politburo is unanimous that elections should be held this year,' Zanu-PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo told the Herald newspaper after the party's top decision-making body met in the capital. On 6 July, negotiators from Mugabe's party and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) agreed on a timeline for election preparations which would put the polls in 2012.