Zimbabwe's longtime president Robert Mugabe vows to step down only if he loses today, meets with Obasanjo.

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe declared on the eve of the country’s election that he will hand over power should he lose the hotly contested poll but he denied allegations of voter intimidation.

Mr Mugabe’s rivals and human rights groups maintain that citizens in rural areas are being commandeered to vote for his Zanu (PF) party.

Mr Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s leader since independence from Britain in 1980, said the "rural areas also have lions and elephants", adding that these could have "been mistaken" for traditional chiefs. Mr Mugabe said he was bullish of winning the landmark polls.

Mr Mugabe said he had on Tuesday morning met former Nigerian President Olusegan Obasanjo at the State House although their meeting had lasted only 15 minutes.

"Yes we met … and reminisced for a bit. He said so far so good." Unconfirmed reports say Mr Mugabe and his Zanu (PF) party were initially reluctant to have Mr Obasanjo — who declared upon his arrival in Harare on Saturday that he was in Zimbabwe merely as an observer — come to Zimbabwe as the head of the African Union (AU) election observer mission.

Mr Obasanjo is by any yardstick an African heavyweight and is widely seen as a man who can hold his own against Mr Mugabe, one of the continent’s steeliest leaders. The rapid rise in concern about the electoral commission’s ability to run fair elections is in contrast to reassuring statements in Harare last week by Nkosazana Dhlamini-Zuma, the head of the AU Commission.