Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, has said he will form a new government with or without the opposition."In fact, preferably without."
But Zimbabwe's two opposition factions said on Wednesday they will not take part in any government formed by Mugabe before power-sharing talks have been concluded.
Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), are deadlocked in power-sharing talks over how much control Mugabe should surrender.
Mugabe told The Herald, a government-controlled newspaper, that he would form the government and a new cabinet even without a resolution to currently stalled power-sharing talks with the MDC. "We shall soon be setting up a government. The MDC does not want to come in apparently. This time they have been promised by the British that sanctions would be more devastating, that in six months' time the government will collapse. I do not know when that day will come. I wish Tsvangirai well on that day."
Meanwhile, Nelson Chamisa, the MDC spokesman, said: "You can't just have a cabinet without a mandate".