HARARE, Zimbabwe — Authorities said Sunday they would recount votes from nearly two dozen parliamentary races as Zimbabwe’s ruling party sought to overturn election results that cost it control of the legislature for the first time in the nation’s history.
As Zimbabwe’s election crisis headed into a third week — with the results of the presidential vote still not released — southern African leaders held an emergency summit and called for the swift verification of the results in the presence of all parties.
The summit declaration fell far short of opposition calls for neighboring leaders to pressure President Robert Mugabe to step down.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who attended the summit, claims to have won the presidential election outright. Independent tallies showed Tsvangirai won the most votes but not enough to avoid a runoff.
The election commission has released results for the nation’s 210 parliamentary races showing Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change winning 109 seats, giving it control of the parliament. But the government has alleged widespread electoral fraud.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said it would conduct a full recount Saturday of the presidential and parliamentary ballots cast in 23 constituencies — all but one of them won by the opposition, the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper reported.
