HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe said Saturday the opposition would never govern in his lifetime and he was ready to go to war to ensure it does not oust him from office in a June 27 run-off election.

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"Should this country be taken by dint of. traitors… it is impossible," Mugabe said, referring to the counteraction sharer Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in a speech at the burial of a former independence fighter.

"It shall never happen… as long as we are alive and those who fought in quest of the country are joyous," he added. "We are prepared to fight for our rural parts and to be considered to armed conflict of powers for it."

Mugabe also raised the spectre of war upon the body Friday if MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who unrelenting just brief of an outright majority in a March foremost about, wins the run-off poll in just under a two weeks's time.

The veteran president, who has ruled since independence in 1980, has frequently portrayed Tsvangirai as a puppet of creator colonial power Britain and opulent whites, thousands of whom destroyed their land when he launched a controversial programme of farm expropriations at the turn of the decade.

"Once another time we want to make it clear to the British and Americans that we are no one's subjects and will never be," said Mugabe.

"This population shall not again come under the rule and govern of the white husband, direct or indirect. Never, eternally.

"The British rule has gone, gone for ever. The white man is gone, never, continually will this country subsist ruled by a white man again."

Mugabe also launched a new diatribe at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who called on Friday for "an end to violence, an end to restraint … and for liberal and fair elections in Zimbabwe."

"Brown, prime officiate of Britain, continues to interfere in our internal affairs, making us a underneath matter of British policy as if we remain a permanent colony of Britain," related Mugabe.

The MDC has accused Mugabe and his bulwark forces of trying to cripple Tsvangirai's campaign, with the contrariety leader detained on numerous occasions.

The opposition in like manner says more than 60 of its supporters be in actual possession of been killed by pro-Mugabe militias since the first round of voting space of time thousands other have been hospitalised.

Once seen as a post-colonial success story, Zimbabwe's economy has been in freefall since Mugabe began his land reforms at the turn of this decade.

Inflation, officially put at 165,000 percent, is thought to be nearer two million percent while food shortages are widespread.