Nov 2, 2009, 9:22 GMT
Harare - Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo and current head of Southern Africa's regional political alliance, was in Zimbabwe for talks Monday with the partners in the country's stricken unity government, officials said.
His arrival precedes a summit in Maputo on Thursday of the Southern African Development Community, the region's 15-nation bloc, said James Maridadi, spokesman for Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Tsvangirai shares power in the eight-month-old unity government with President Robert Mugabe and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara, leader of the smaller faction of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Kabila's arrival and rapid convening of the summit this week is seen as a sign of mounting alarm among Zimbabwe's neighbours over the breakdown last month in relations between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
The MDC partially withdrew from the government, accusing Mugabe's Zanu-PF of being an 'unreliable and dishonest' coalition partner.
The party, which is boycotting cabinet meetings, accuses of refusing to honour its undertakings in the unity agreement between the three parties on democratic reforms.
Maridadi said Kabila had arrived Sunday night and would be seeing each of the heads of the government.
He also that the SADC troika on defence and security, a panel of the bloc which is the guarantor of the agreement underpinning the unity government, would meet in Mozambique's capital Maputo Thursday to try to break the governing deadlock.
The summit follows a three-day fact-finding mission last week of SADC foreign ministers into the dispute.
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