Harare  - Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Friday announced his party would boycott the country's unity government, accusing President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party of failing to keep its side of the country's historic power-sharing agreement.

Tsvangirai said he was pulling ministers from his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) out of a coalition cabinet, while stressing he was not "pulling out officially" from the eight-month-old power-sharing government.

Tsvangirai was addressing a press conference in Harare two days after his nominee for deputy agriculture minister, popular MDC politician Roy Bennett, was re-imprisoned pending his trial for alleged possession of weapons with the intent to cause sabotage, terrorism and insurgency.

The MDC accuses the Mugabe-loyal attorney general's office of conspiring to keep Bennett, MDC treasurer and a white former farmer, out of office.

Bennett's case had been due to be heard by a magistrate's court in Mutare but prosecutors successfully applied for it to be moved to the High Court, a move that saw Bennett's bail automatically revoked.

The MDC had reacted angrily to Bennett's re-imprisonment, calling it a "serious abuse of the law which will affect the coalition government."

Bennett was due to appear in court for a new bail hearing later Friday.(dpa)