Zimbabwe unity govt must end in 2012: Mugabe

President Robert Mugabe said Friday that Zimbabwe's unity government should dissolve within months, calling for elections next year despite stalled efforts at political reform.

The 86-year-old leader, in power since independence in 1980, was forced into a power-sharing deal with his rival, current Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in February last year.

Their arrangement was strained from the start, but tensions between them have again ripped into the open with Tsvangirai struggling to assert his authority within the power-sharing regime.

"The life of this creature called the Global Political Agreement is only two years and it started in February last year," Mugabe said in state media.

"Some will say, let us negotiate and give it another life. I am reluctant because part of the things happening (in the inclusive government) are absolutely foolish and stupid," Mugabe said.

"February next year, which is about four months to go, then it will have lived its full life and I do not know what is going to happen if we are not ready with a constitution."

The unity pact calls for drafting a new constitution that would govern new elections, following bloody 2008 polls when Tsvangirai won the first round of the presidential race, in Mugabe's first-ever defeat at the ballot box.

The response was a nationwide campaign of political violence that Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says left 200 of its supporters dead, prompting him to pull out of the run-off.

Under intense regional pressure, the two entered a pact that was supposed to require Mugabe to share power with Tsvangirai, but left the ageing liberation leader in control of security forces as well as television and radio.

Mugabe has refused to consult with Tsvangirai on key appointments, such as the reserve bank governor and the attorney general.

Unemployment is still estimated around 90 percent, but many receive remittances from the estimated three million Zimbabweans who fled the country -- money that people inside the country can now budget and save.

But political violence still simmers across the country, with one Tsvangirai supporter killed when pro-Mugabe militants stoned a constitutional outreach meeting last month.

The constitutional talks were suspended after the attack, and were again postponed this month due to funding problems, casting doubt on plans to hold the referendum on June 30.

Mugabe says he wants the referendum by March with elections later in the year.

Alarmed at the latest flare-up in tensions, South Africa dispatched mediators to Zimbabwe this week to speak with the feuding parties, who both said they are ready to hold elections.

"Now they are all saying bring them on," foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane told reporters in Pretoria.

"Whether they have concluded their new constitution or not, it's no longer the question. They want to go to elections."