Berlin  - Germany Wednesday welcomed a power-shift in the Zimbabwean parliament with the election this week of a speaker from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and appealed to President Robert Mugabe to resume talks on establishing a transitional government.

"The German government welcomes this courageous election in the lower house as showing the spirit of change revealed in parliamentary and presidential elections this year is continuing," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Berlin.

The spokesman said Germany regretted that talks on setting up a government of national unity in the troubled southern African country had broken down without result in recent days.

Mugabe had begun to concentrate power in his own hands, he said.

But this "cynical politics of business as usual" had suffered a setback with the election of MDC candidate Lovemore Moyo as speaker on Monday, the spokesman said.

Germany called on Mugabe to restart talks with the MDC and to work towards a transitional government, he said. (dpa)