EXCLUSIVE - Zuma says Zimbabwe situation not acceptable

By Kerstin Gehmlich and Kathrin Schich

BERLIN (Reuters) - South African ruling party leader Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday Africa must send a mission to Zimbabwe to end a delay in issuing election results, which he called unacceptable.

In his toughest comments yet on the three-week delay in announcing results of a presidential vote, Zuma told Reuters:

"It's not acceptable. It's not helping the Zimbabwean people who have gone out to ... elect the kind of party and presidential candidate they want, exercising their constitutional right."

Zuma has made several forthright comments on the election delay, distancing himself from South African President Thabo Mbeki, the designated regional mediator in Zimbabwe, who has long insisted on a discreet approach he calls "quiet diplomacy".

Zuma made clear he was talking about a new initiative in addition to Mbeki's mediation and said the crisis was affecting South Africa.

The South African president, who lost the leadership of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to Zuma last December, has been criticised at home and abroad for playing down the gravity of Zimbabwe's electoral deadlock.

"I don't think the constitution says: 'If you like, you can hold the results'," Zuma told Reuters in Berlin. "The electoral commission must issue the results because it is actually destroying its own credibility as an institution that is supposed to be neutral."

Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says its leader Morgan Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe and that the veteran president's 28-year rule is over.