South African President Thabo Mbeki held talks with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Saturday to try to help end a political crisis.

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party said its leader Morgan Tsvangirai had declined to meet Mbeki, who has tried to mediate between the two sides after Mugabe's disputed re-election on June 27.

"Yes, the president earlier on Saturday met President Mugabe and Arthur Mutambara in the context of the mediation process," confirmed Mbeki's spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga. Mutambara leads a breakaway faction of the MDC.

The meeting came as secretly shot video emerged of vote rigging in last month's presidential run-off.

A Zimbabwe prison officer used a hidden camera given to him by The Guardian newspaper to film how he and his colleagues were forced to vote for Robert Mugabe in the widely criticised runoff ballot.

The Guardian posted the film on its Web site Saturday, and said in the film and accompanying stories that the officer, Shepherd Yuda, fled Zimbabwe on Friday and was now with his family in an undisclosed location.

International observers said the June 27 runoff was not free or fair, largely because of violence against opposition supporters. There also were reports of ballot tampering as described in Yuda's film, with members of the security forces and others not allowed to vote in secret-AP