HARARE, July 19 (Xinhua) -- South African President Thabo Mbeki has invited the African Union and the United Nations to join a new "reference group" with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) that will liaise on his efforts to mediate a solution to Zimbabwe's problems, The Herald reported on Saturday.

    President Mbeki, however, remains fully in charge of the mediation process as mandated by SADC and the AU, but the group can monitor progress and give him its views.

    Speaking after President Mbeki met AU Commission chief Jean Ping and UN envoy Haile Menkerios in Pretoria, South African Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi said the new group would support Mbeki in his mission to mediate between the ruling Zanu-PF and MDC in Harare on behalf of the 14-nation SADC regional bloc.

    "The special representative of SADC (Angolan Deputy Foreign Minister George Chikoti), the AU and the UN were briefed by President Mbeki and he invited them to constitute a reference group with the mediator on an ongoing basis," said Mufamadi, who is President Mbeki's right-hand man in the mediation effort.

    "They will appoint people who will be based at the venue country. They will get briefings on a regular basis from the facilitator," he said.

    President Mbeki, who was appointed by SADC a year ago to mediate in Zimbabwe, met Ping and Menkerios behind closed doors, a spokesman in the president's office said.

    South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was to give an update on her leader's mediation efforts at Friday's meeting of SADC foreign ministers in Durban, with the South African government insisting that a resolution to the Zimbabwe issue remains the sole preserve of SADC

    . "Our view has always been, and I am stressing it, we are being diverted by a fake argument about the expansion of the SADC facilitation," Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad told reporters earlier this week.

    Friday's meeting between President Mbeki and AU and UN officials was expected to pave the way for the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding setting the agenda for dialogue between Zanu-PF and the two MDC factions.

    MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Wednesday made a last-minute decision to withhold his signature from the MoU. Tsvangirai told The Star newspaper of South Africa on Thursday that he was awaiting the outcome of Friday's meeting between President Mbeki and Mr Ping before he could sign the MoU.