Johannesburg - Britain and South Africa's foreign ministers struck discordant notes on Zimbabwe on the final day of a visit to South Africa by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

"The people of Zimbabwe need to remove themselves from their current crisis situation," South Africa's Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told a joint press briefing with Miliband in Pretoria, according to SAPA news agency.

Miliband said he stood by Britain's position that the crisis in Zimbabwe was a regional one and that regional and international intervention was necessary, SAPA reported.

Miliband also reportedly quoted a saying in seSotho, one of South Africa's 11 official languages, that if a neighbour's house is burning, the owner of the house next door must recognize that he is also in danger.

The two were reporting back on talks between South African and British delegations on economic, political and trade relations.

Tuesday was the final day of Miliband's three-day visit to South Africa, during which he appealed for broad international support for United States-proposed United Nations sanctions against Zimbabwe in the wake of a discredited June 27 presidential election in which longtime leader Robert Mugabe claimed victory.

Dlamini-Zuma did not say whether South Africa, as a member of the UN Security Council, would try to block the sanctions, merely pointing to the reservations expressed by African leaders at the G8 summit in Japan on the issue of sanctions. (dpa)