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 The BBC's Flora Botsford reports"The squatters are showing no signs of moving"  real 28k  |
A High Court ruling on Friday gave thousands of black squatters 24 hours to leave the white-owned farms which are being occupied, and ordered the police to evict them if they did not move.
But the government, which supports the redistribution of white-owned land to black farmers, has announced it will seek to "vary" the court's decision.
The squatters have so far defied the High Court ruling, and the police have made no moves to evict them.
 Landowners have come under attack on some of the farms
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"We concluded that we should take steps to place before the High Court certain available information on the basis of which the court would be asked to vary the order it granted," Mr Chinamasa said.
"I believe that an objective consideration of this further information and submissions might persuade the court to come to a different conclusion on the matter," he added.
Jerry Grant, deputy director of the Commercial Farmers' Union which is seeking to have the squatters removed, warned Zimbabwe was "descending into a lawless state" as the police had failed to act.
Since independence in 1980, President Robert Mugabe has frequently spoken of plans to take land from the white farmers who own most of Zimbabwe's best agricultural ground and redistribute to the black majority - but so far, such plans have failed to materialise.
Last month, supporters of President Mugabe began moving onto 600 white-owned farms, with the approval of the president.
Questions in Westminster
In the United Kingdom, opposition Conservative members of parliament urged the government to call for Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth.
But a government minister, John Battle, said Britain was not in a position to do so since Commonwealth decision-making was by consensus.
He added that Britain was making sure that aid programmes for Zimbabwe were helping the people that needed them rather than going directly to the government in Harare.
Relations between London and Harare reached an all-time low two weeks ago, after a UK diplomatic bag was forcibly opened by the authorities at Harare airport.
President Mugabe has also said that the UK - where the ancestors of most white Zimbabweans came from - should bear responsibility for compensating any white farmers whose land was expropriated.
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