Britain on Monday condemned the ongoing recount in Zimbabwe's contested general elections as a worthless exercise aimed at allowing President Robert Mugabe to "steal" the vote. "No-one can have any faith in this recount," Foreign Secretary David Miliband said, questioning the security of the ballot boxes held by the authorities since March 29 and saying election officials had been arrested.
"The ballot boxes have been kept in uncertain conditions," Miliband said in a written statement to parliament that marked a hardening of Britain's criticism of Mugabe's rule in the former British colony.
The arrests of more than a dozen Election Commission officials was a clear attempt to "threaten and punish" independent-minded polling officers, said Miliband, who also slammed the "ludicrously slow" pace of the partial recount.
"This only serves to fuel suspicion that President Mugabe is seeking to reverse the results that have been published, to regain a majority in parliament, and to amplify his own count in the Presidential election.
"If that is the case, then what we are witnessing is a charade of democracy," he said. The electoral commission - a body whose leadership is appointed by Mugabe - began Saturday a partial recount in 23 out of 210 constituencies.
"We can have little confidence that whatever is ultimately announced as the presidential election results will not have been sullied and contaminated by rigging during this recount," Miliband said. Miliband, who is currently in Pakistan, echoed Prime Minister Gordon Brown's view at the United Nations in New York last week that Mugabe was attempting to "steal the election" from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).