Instead, South African President Thabo Mbeki traveled to Harare to meet Mugabe ahead of the summit, Mbeki's spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said. Mugabe met Mbeki, a key mediator in the crisis, at the airport Saturday and the motorcade was seen speeding from the airport toward Mugabe's offices.
Official results from the March 29 election have yet to be released. Independent tallies suggest Mugabe lost but garnered enough votes to force a runoff. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai says he won outright and he has traveled the region asking neighboring leaders to push for Mugabe to resign after 28 years in power.
The opposition says Mugabe is using the delay in announcing results to send ruling party militants and security forces into the countryside to wage a campaign of violence to intimidate opposition supporters ahead of a possible runoff.
Tendai Biti, secretary-general of Tsvangirai's party, said the military had taken over in Zimbabwe and urged action by southern African leaders who have failed to criticize Mugabe in the past.
The leaders "must speak strongly and decisively against the dictatorship and against the status quo in respect of which our people are suffering, our people are being brutalized, our people are being traumatized," he told AP Television News in Lusaka, Zambia's capital.
On Friday, police banned all political rallies, a move that appeared designed to foil opposition plans to take to the streets of Harare to ratchet up the pressure on the regime.
International pressure on Mugabe has been growing since the election. In his strongest warning to Mugabe yet, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the world's patience with Zimbabwe's regime is "wearing thin."
The southern African leaders' meeting in Zambia could add pressure on Zimbabwe to release the results. However, previous meetings of regional leaders expected to criticize Mugabe instead ended with statements of support for the increasingly dictatorial leader.
