Berlin - Zimbabwean prime minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai said Thursday he was confident of an end to the political impasse holding up the formation of a government of national unity.

Speaking after talks with German officials, he said this would come after issues relating to the definition of the prime minister's powers and the allocation of government ministries had been resolved.

"We will find a solution. It may take some time, but we will find a solution. The position of President Robert Mugabe is untenable," he said in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Johannesburg - Former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan assured Thursday that he, former United States president Jimmy Carter and a third member of The Elders had "no intention" of interfering in Zimbabwe's power-sharing talks.

Annan was responding to the Zimbabwean government's put-down of the trio's plans to visit Zimbabwe to assess the extent of the country's humanitarian crisis.

Harare/Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's health services, once regarded among the best in Africa, are "in a state of collapse" with its main hospitals closed and a cholera epidemic raging, a leading medical body said Wednesday.

The country's four main hospitals, in the capital Harare and the western city of Bulawayo, were "virtually closed," while smaller district hospitals and municipal clinics "are barely functioning or closed," the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) said.

"Sick people in need of attention are being turned away."

Paris  - Zimbabwe's embattled prime-minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai Tuesday charged that entrenched Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe had denied him a passport, forcing him to travel on special documents through Europe.

"It is really ridiculous that the prime minister of a country has no passport," Tsvangirai said in Paris. "I hope that this changes soon."

Harare/Johannesburg - Zimbabwean riot police beat striking doctors and nurses at a Harare hospital on Tuesday and sent them running for cover in wards, witnesses said, as reports emerged of dozens more dead in a fast-spreading cholera outbreak.

The protest took place at Parirenyatwa general hospital where around 200 doctors and nurses, from that hospital and Harare General hospital, held a demonstration to demand better pay and equipment.

Berlin - The pressure group Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) is to receive Amnesty International's 2008 human rights prize at a ceremony in Berlin on Sunday evening.

The award, worth 10,000 euros (12,600 dollars), will be presented to a delegation led by the group's two spokeswomen, Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu.

Co-founder Williams and her organization are being honoured for "their tireless struggle for human rights," the German chapter of Amnesty said ahead of the presentation.