Zimbabwe's Mugabe starts state visit to Nigeria

ABUJA, Nigeria (Reuters) -- Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe arrived in Nigeria on Wednesday for a four-day state visit and talks with President Olusegun Obasanjo, officials said.

Obasanjo, who was military ruler in the late 1970s, played a key role in the final stages of the nationalist struggle that ended in 1980 with the independence of Zimbabwe, the former British colony of Rhodesia.

Diplomatic analysts say Obasanjo's rationalization of British Petroleum in Nigeria in 1979 helped push Britain towards staging peace talks that led to pre-independence elections in Rhodesia. Mugabe has been in power since his guerrilla movement won that poll.

Obasanjo greeted Mugabe and his wife Grace as they flew into Nigeria's interior capital Abuja. Both leaders then headed for a first round of bilateral talks.

Diplomats say their talks would touch on raging controversy over Mugabe's plan to seize farms owned by Zimbabwe's minority white commercial farmers for distribution to landless blacks.

The two men were also expected to discuss the two-year-old conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Zimbabwean troops are backing President Laurent Kabila's army against Ugandan and Rwandan-backed rebels.

The deployment of thousands of Zimbabwean troops backed by tanks and warplanes has compounded Mugabe's economic problems which triggered food riots in the Southern African country last month. Mugabe refuses to withdraw his troops until Ugandans and Rwandans pull back.

While Mugabe is in Nigeria, Obasanjo is scheduled to meet veteran Congolese opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi whose campaign for peace talks with rebels brought him at loggerheads with Kabila.

The Nigerian presidency said Obasanjo would meet Tshisekedi on Thursday.

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