Zimbabwe's High Commissioner summoned

Zimbabwe's High Commissioner in London is to be summoned so that the UK government can demand an end to the escalating violence by squatters occupying white-owned farms.

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook ordered the move after a white farmer was reportedly abducted from his farm and shot dead.

Mr Cook, speaking during a visit to India, said: "This violence is exactly what we feared would be the result of the breakdown of the rule of law in Zimbabwe.

"That is why we have been urging the government of Zimbabwe to end the illegal occupation of the farms.

"We will be demanding that the government stops the occupation of the farms before there are any more deaths.

"We will also be demanding that those responsible for this murder are found and are charged."

A Foreign Office spokesman said the High Commissioner would be summoned to meet Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain or another senior official.

He said: "The Foreign Secretary's instruction is that he should be brought in today."

In the worst violence yet, farmer David Stevens was abducted from his occupied property near Macheke, 75 miles east of Harare, the capital, and driven into the bush where he was shot dead.

Commercial Farmers Union officials said Mr Stevens, who was his late 40s, was the first white farmer killed in a tense standoff between landowners and squatters backed by President Robert Mugabe's ruling party.

Four of the victim's neighbours, who went to his assistance after he was confronted by squatters yesterday, were also abducted and are still missing.

A fifth neighbour, John Osborne, escaped and is being treated in a hospital in the provincial centre of Marondera.

Zimbabweans living in Britain were yesterday urged to return home to take part in the struggle against President Robert Mugabe as tensions over land in the southern African country remained high.

At an emotional rally in London, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said Mr Mugabe had changed from being a liberation hero to become a dictator who had led the country into "lawlessness and anarchy".

But he told the audience of more than 1,000 largely white Zimbabweans: "We want you to participate in the political processes of your own country. We want you to come back home."

Mr Tsvangirai, who heads Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change, added: "The battle is not outside, the battle is in the changes at home."

People in Zimbabwe were now coming "out of their slumber" and would not accept Mr Mugabe's continued rule, Mr Tsvangirai said, adding: "Robert Mugabe can run but he cannot hide."

But a group of former guerrillas in the bush war that led to Zimbabwe's independence has vowed to continue their takeovers of white-owned farms, defying a High Court ruling and a government appeal for them to leave the farms, a leader of the occupations said.

President Mugabe has backed the occupations, describing them as a justified protest against the ownership of one third of the nation's productive land by the descendants of British settlers.

But on Friday his government appealed for an end to the stalemate.

Chenjerai Hunzvi, head of the National Liberation War Veterans' Association, said he was powerless to order squatters led by war veterans to leave white-owned land.

"If there are human rights, we have right to our land ... And that must be respected," he told about 500 cheering supporters at the ruling party's headquarters in Harare. "The redistribution of land must be speeded up."

Zimbabwe's 4,000 white-owned farms comprise about a third of the country's productive farmland, while millions of blacks are landless and impoverished.

Since the end of February, thousands of squatters armed with clubs, axes and guns have invaded at least 900 white-owned farms and demanded the farmers sign away their land.