Tsvangirai: Why I Dropped Out

ZImbabwe's opposition leader tells the Guardian that he dropped out of Friday's run-off election because he "can no longer allow Zimbabwe's people to suffer this torture." Morgan Tsvangirai explains that ending his campaign was "not a political decision" but an attempt to stop the violence inflicted by Robert Mugabe's thugs.

Tsvangirai predicts Mugabe will proclaim himself the duly re-elected leader of Zimbabwe this weekend and "further deny its people a space to breathe." But he warns that Mugabe's regime can only be changed from the outside, with international peacekeepers and a real election: "Intervention is a loaded concept in today's world," he admits, but the international community has no choice but to "become more than a moral participant." (More Morgan Tsvangirai stories.)