Mediation offer in land reform row

The President tried a diplomatic role in Cairo

Nigeria's president says he is trying to bring Britain and Zimbabwe together for talks in the deepening row over Harare's sanction of land seizures from white farmers.

During a brief stop at Gatwick Airport on route to the G77 summit in Havana, Cuba, President Olusegun Obasanjo said he was acting as an "impartial listener" .

The Nigerian leader was reluctant to talk about the part he would play in future talks between Britain and Zimbabwe, but a Nigerian diplomat said he wants to play a leading role behind the scenes.

The diplomat said: "As the talks involve matters of diplomacy, the president does not want to conduct these in the glare of the media spotlight, rather he wants to do it quietly behind closed doors."

Cairo talks

President Obasanjo brought Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe together at the Africa-Europe summit in Cairo last week.

Robert Mugabe:Britain is on the warpath

On Sunday, President Obasanjo said: "In both sides I saw what was a reluctance to break the ice, even if there was no hostility or no absolute lack of interest in meeting.

"So I brokered a meeting to get the two sides to sit together in the same room."

The president added: "All I said to them was that I am like a midwife and that as you have got to this stage my job is done.

"My foreign minister was pulling my leg and saying I will have to see how the child turns out."

It is less than a year since Nigeria returned to civilian rule and already the democratic president of Africa's most populous country is making his presence felt internationally.

Relations: lowest point for years

The meeting in Cairo, which Mr Cook called interesting, did at least lead to an agreement from Zimbabwe to send a delegation to London.

But since then, the row between the two countries has only deepened.

President Mugabe has angrily declared that if Britain continues to object and was, as he put it, on the warpath, then Zimbabwe too was prepared to go back to the trenches.

How the Nigerian president can help is not quite clear.

No date has been set for the London meeting but President Mugabe is also expected in Cuba next week. A possible venue for some intense behind the scenes diplomacy.

There has been a demonstration against the latest moves by President Mugabe's government outside Zimbabwe House in London on Sunday.