With apparent US State Department backing, the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based organisation of former high-level diplomats, is calling for the creation of a transitional government in Zimbabwe.

The group's aim is to create the conditions necessary for new elections in the Southern African country and the eventual departure of President Robert Mugabe.

Western powers should support any effort by the presidents of South Africa and Nigeria to broker a power-sharing arrangement between Mugabe and his challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, the ICG said in a statement recently. The latter, however, has just been charged by Mugabe's government with treason.

''In the end, the goal must be a transitional power-sharing arrangement, new elections and a political exit strategy for Robert Mugabe," said the ICG statement, issued here, in Brussels, and in Harare.

The group called on the international community to impose or extend targeted sanctions, including a freeze on their foreign assets, against Mugabe and his closest associates and supporters, and to ''substantially increase support for civic groups working to establish democracy and prevent conflict.''

US officials said they were already moving in that direction. This week, they added six more Mugabe associates and their family members to a list of almost two dozen whose US visas have been cancelled.

They said that Washington will impose an assets freeze against the targeted individuals within 10 days to two weeks.

''I think it will be effective, because we're going to bring it home to the leadership,'' said Charles Snyder, deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa at a forum on Zimbabwe at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) here. ''There will be a personal price,'' he added.

Looming crisis

Washington is placing most of its hopes for arranging a solution to what US officials see as a looming crisis in southern Africa on South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has been quietly pressing — so far without success — for the formation of a unity government in Zimbabwe in the wake of Mugabe's claim of victory in the presidential election there earlier this month.

Election authorities said Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980, won 56 percent of the vote. Monitors, however, said turnout in remote areas was inflated while tens of thousands of MDC voters in the party's urban strongholds were effectively prevented from casting ballots.

Washington, along with other Western powers and non-governmental monitoring groups, including the ICG, has denounced the election as unfair and ''illegitimate'' and vowed not to recognise the results.

It has strongly protested the ongoing crackdown against Tsvangirai and his supporters in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), highlighted by his recent indictment for treason, as well as a resumption of land invasions and attacks by youth militia and ''war vets'' against suspected MDC activists.

US officials say they plan to continue providing humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe, which they describe as being on the brink of a major economic and food crisis. All aid, however, will be channeled through non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to ensure that the Mugabe government does not benefit.

That approach is consistent with the ICG's suggested two-track strategy in which regional leaders work to broker a transitional power-sharing arrangement while the European Union (EU), the United States and others take a hard-line position that reinforces the leverage of the regional efforts.

''The role of the international community should be one of unrelenting pressure on the Harare regime, rejecting the legitimacy of the electoral result and calling for a new vote,'' according to John Prendergast, co-director of the ICG's Africa program and an Africa expert attached to the National Security Council under former President Bill Clinton.

''South Africa and Nigeria should be left to broker an internal solution for Zimbabwe, (and) the international community in turn should politically and financially support the result of their efforts if the key stakeholders in Zimbabwe are successfully brought into the political process,'' said Prendergast, who has just returned from Harare.

Such a strategy appeared to echo State Department views. ''I think we want a government of transition,'' said Snyder recently.

''If a government of unity is in fact a government of transition, then we're in favour of that, and we'll help,'' he said, adding that new elections should take place in a matter of months, not years.

The ICG, like other commentators here, believe that the stakes are extremely high.

''Good governance and African peer pressure, two of the key planks of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) upon which most of the continent's hopes for a better future rest, will be undermined if Africa's response to Zimbabwe's stolen election is half-hearted," according to the group.

Driving forces

That message is echoed by senior State Department officials who note that both Mbeki and Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo have been the driving forces behind Nepad, a proposed bargain between African leaders and foreign donors to sharply increase aid and investment in Africa in return for political and economic reform.

''Mugabe is trashing Nepad,'' said one senior official this week, who added that he was encouraged that Mbeki and Obasanjo went along with the Commonwealth's decision this week to suspend Zimbabwe's membership in the aftermath of the election.

US officials insist that South Africa and Mbeki are the key to what happens next, if only because it is the only country which can keep Mugabe afloat given the state of Zimbabwe's economy. ''Nobody else is going to help him,'' said a senior official flatly.

US analysts believe that unemployment, already at more than 60 percent, will rise to 75 percent or more by summer and note that only 25 percent of the maize that is normally planted in Zimbabwe at this time is in the ground.

Malnutrition rates are skyrocketing, and what has become a steady flow of migrants crossing the Limpopo River into South Africa is expected to become a flood in the coming months.

The economic outlook is so bad, according to US officials, that they expect increasing civil unrest over the same period, probably beginning in Matabeleland and spreading into predominantly Shona areas from there. (IPS)