London: The world should send a powerful and united message that it will not recognise Zimbabwe's "illegitimate" government, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today. Denouncing President Robert Mugabe s regime as a "discredited cabal", he reiterated a call for the United Nations human rights envoy to return to the crisis-wracked African country.

"We do not recognise the regime as legitimate," he told lawmakers in a debate on Zimbabwe after opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of elections scheduled for this week.

And he said: "The international community must send a powerful and united message: that we will not recognise the fraudulent election rigging and the violence and intimidation of a criminal and discredited cabal."

"The current government with no parliamentary majority, having lost the first round of the presidential elections and holding power only because of violence and intimidation is a regime that should not be recognised by anyone," he said.

Tsvangirai announced yesterday that he was quitting the presidential election second round run-off scheduled for this week, saying increasing violence had made a free and fair election impossible.

Following that decision the MDC leader  who came first in first-round polls has taken refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare, according to a spokesman for Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen.

Source : PTI