Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Saturday urged supporters to view his re-election campaign as "total war," as police filed criminal charges against his main political opponent.

"Where we are going, it is not like the June 2000 parliamentary elections, which was like a football game where I was central striker. This is total war, the Third Chimurenga (uprising)," Mugabe said at the closing of his ZANU-PF party congress.

As expected, the more than 7,000 delegates to the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) conference endorsed Mugabe as the party's candidate in the poll.

Looking haggard and lacking his customary zeal, Mugabe served notice to the opposition that his party would not give up power without a fight.

"We will have a command centre, unlike last year. This is war, this is not a game. This is the Third Chimurenga. You are all soldiers of ZANU-PF, for the people," he said.

"When we come to your province, we must see you ready as the commanders, when the time comes to fire the bullet, the ballot, the trajectory of the gun must be true," he said.

Mugabe, whose party was humiliated in most urban centres in the 2000 parliamentary elections by the two-year-old Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), once again made the land issue central to his re-election campaign.

"We shall get the land, let the people call it their own and be the masters of their own destiny," said the president, who has pinned his re-election hopes on the rural voters who are supposed to benefit from his scheme to resettle white-owned farms with blacks.

His belligerent remarks came as police in Harare charged Zimbabwe's main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai with breaking a telecommunications law. Police said they found an unlicensed walkie-talkie at his home two nights ago.