Johannesburg  - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party has opposed calling in ex-South African president Thabo Mbeki to salvage a power-sharing deal with prime minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Zanu-PF's chief negotiator Patrick Chinamasa rejected calls from the MDC for Mbeki to step in to end the impasse between the two parties over the distribution of cabinet posts in a new unity government.

Mbeki is the Southern African Development Community (SADC)'s mediator in Zimbabwe, who brokered the power-sharing deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai last month.

SADC said they expected him to continue in the role after he stepped down as South African president on September 21.

"I don't think that the issue of allocation of ministries is a matter that can be referred to the facilitator (Mbeki). We cannot, at the slightest difference in opinion, call outsiders to mediate," Chinamasa was quoted by the state-controlled Herald newspaper Thursday as saying.

"Even if you are a married couple, you cannot have a situation where your wife runs to her mother each time you have a problem in your home. If there is thinking on such a kind of approach, it has to stop in the interest of harmonization of relations," he added.

On Tuesday, Mugabe and Tsvangirai held talks but failed to finalize the make-up of cabinet.

Under a deal the longtime foes signed on September 15, Mugabe's party is supposed to get 15 posts in a 31-member cabinet, Tsvangirai's party is to get 13 and the remaining three go to a splinter MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara.

The MDC blames Mugabe for the delay in implementing the deal, saying he wants to retain "all the key ministries," such as foreign affairs, home affairs and finance. Western governments have been calling for the MDC to have the upper hand in government.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Thursday that his party had complained to SADC.

"We won the March 29 (parliamentary) election but they (Zanu-PF) want us to play second fiddle," Chamisa complained.

"We hope they (SADC and the African Union) chip in quickly and the impasse is broken."

A unity government that attracts aid and investment is seen as the only real solution to Zimbabwe's economic collapse. The September deal ended Mugabe's 28-year stranglehold on power, but the euphoria has since evaporated as hardliners in his party balk at sharing power with the MDC.

On his return home from the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday, Mugabe said that the new government would be formed by the end of the week.

Tsvangirai said at the weekend a new government was urgently needed to avoid starvation in the country, whose food production capacity has been wiped out by a decade of disastrous policies. (dpa)