Harare – Attempts to facilitate a political solution in Zimbabwe ahead of the upcoming elections, will be taken a step further with the meeting Thursday between President Thabo Mbeki and members of Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF and opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

President Mbeki was mandated by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Heads of State and Government extra-ordinary summit in Tanzania, in March 2007 to facilitate talks between the two parties in that country.

He is accompanied to Harare by Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi and is expected to return to South Africa later in the day.

Last year, at the 27th SADC Summit in Lusaka, the Southern African heads of state mandated their countries' finance ministers to draft an economic recovery plan for Zimbabwe, in tandem with Zimbabwe’s government.

Executive Secretary of the SADC Secretariat, Tomaz Salomao had been compiling a report for some months on Zimbabwe's ailing economy, and presented this document, including a proposed turnaround plan, to the summit.

In addition, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Wednesday presented to President Robert Mugabe the preliminary report of an exercise to delimit boundaries for the House of Assembly, Senate and local authority seats to be used in the elections scheduled for March this year.

Commission Chairman Justice George Chiweshe presented the report at a function held at the State House which was also attended by the Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister and the ministry's permanent secretary, Patrick Chinamasa and David Mangota respectively.

The report lists and describes the proposed boundaries for the 210 House of Assembly and 60 elective Senate constituencies as well as for the 1 958 local authority wards.

Statistics from the Registrar-General of Elections showed that as at 4 December 2007, the country had at least 5 612 464 registered voters.

Harare emerged with the highest number of constituencies with 29, followed by Midlands Province with 28, Manicaland and Masvingo provinces with 26 each, Mashonaland East 23, Mashonaland West 22, Mashonaland Central 18, Matabeleland North and South 13 each and Bulawayo 12.

During the pending harmonised elections, the electorate would only cast their votes in the wards in which they are registered unlike in the past when they could vote anywhere within the constituency. - BuaNews