Harare - Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) threatened Tuesday that party leader Morgan Tsvangirai would boycott another meeting of the Southern African Development Community on the Zimbabwean crisis unless he received a passport.

Tsvangirai did not attend a SADC meeting in Swaziland on Monday at which the breakdown in talks between his party and President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party on the formation of a unity government was discussed. Mugabe attended the meeting.

The MDC objected to Tsvangirai, the prime minister-designate, being denied a new passport since his last passport expired in July.

Another SADC meeting was scheduled for next week in Harare.

The MDC said failure by Mugabe's regime to issue him with a new passport by that meeting would be "taken as an indication that Zanu-PF is not willing to proceed in the spirit of the (September power-sharing) agreement.

"This does not bode well for the implementation of the political agreement that is under negotiation," it said.

For Tsvangirai to participate in a SADC meeting with Mugabe in those circumstance would give a "false impression," the MDC warned.

Over a month after agreeing to form a unity government, the MDC and Zanu-PF are at loggerheads over which party should get which ministry in a 31-member cabinet.

Four days of talks in Harare brokered by the SADC-appointed mediator, former South African president Thabo Mbeki, failed to break the deadlock, fuelling fears the deal - billed as the only way out of a severe economic crisis - is on the brink of collapse.

Underscoring the urgency of the situation, 11 more people were reported Tuesday to have died in a new outbreak of cholera.

The daily Herald newspaper quoted the local civil protection unit in the run-down former agricultural town of Chinhoyi in northern Zimbabwe as saying that the deaths had occurred in the last three weeks. Some 500 had been treated for the disease.

The latest deaths follow on the deaths of 16 people, also from cholera, in the dormitory town of Chitungwiza on Harare's outskirts.

Prolonged breakdowns in water supplies, which result in exploding sewerage pipes in crowded townships, and the breakdown in refuse collection are blamed for the unhygienic conditions that foster cholera.

Felix Mubvaruri, a spokesman for the state-controlled Zimbabwe National Water Authority office in Chinhoyi, blamed the shortage of equipment, including rods for clearing blocked sewers, and constant power cuts.

Mugabe's increasingly populist policies over the past decade of his 28-year rule, which have starved his government of cash, are blamed for the economic collapse.

Inflation in Zimbabwe is officially calculated at 230 million per cent and the local currency has plunged to one-quadrillionth of its value since the beginning of the year.

Western donors have promised millions of dollars in aid to the new government, but only if the MDC is given a leading role. (dpa)