President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia opened Saturday's extraordinary summit of Southern African heads of state by saying its purpose was not to put President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in the dock.

Zambia's state broadcaster reported that Mwanawasa, the current chairman of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), told the summit that the failure of the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission to release the results of the presidential election held two weeks ago had created concerns.

These had been aggravated by the Zimbabwe High Court's failure to rule speedily on an application by the opposition for a court order forcing the publication of the results.

The Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation said Mwanawasa had added that the SADC could not stand by and watch when one of its member states was facing a problem.

The summit later deliberated behind closed doors.

Earlier on Saturday, Zimbabwe launched an attack on Mwanawasa for convening the summit.

The Zambian president "has clearly overstepped his boundaries," wrote a columnist in Zimbabwe's government-controlled Herald newspaper. Nathaniel Manheru, a pseudonym for President Robert Mugabe's spokesman, George Charamba, disparagingly called the Lusaka meeting "Levy's summit, for that is exactly what it will be..."

He added that the meeting was "supposed to do the bidding of the white West... I am sure if African leaders show up... many of the founding fathers of this great region... will turn in their graves."

Mugabe is boycotting the summit. One of three cabinet ministers representing Zimbabwe, Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa claimed to Agence France-Presse in Lusaka that the meeting was "sponsored" by the British government.

He also vigorously protested the fact that Mugabe's principal challenger for the presidency, Morgan Tsvangirai, had been invited. "Inviting an opposition leader to a heads of state meeting is unheard of," he told AFP. "We will not accept Tsvangirai to be part of this meeting."