Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Tuesday rejected the calls from U.S. President George Bush and Britain for his resignation, saying that they were "stupid and foolish".
His remarks came after the U.S. administration said Sunday that it had lost confidence in the possibility of the formation of a previously agreed unity government in Zimbabwe as long as Mugabe remains the country's president. Soon afterwards, the British government had backed the U.S. stand on Zimbabwe.
Mugabe on Tuesday compared President Bush's calls for his resignation to "the last kicks of a dying horse" as Bush is preparing to leave office in January.
"Let him keep his comments to himself. They are undeserved, irrelevant, quite stupid and foolish," Mugabe told his supporters at the funeral of a member of his Zanu-PF party. "We do realize that these are the last kicks of a dying horse."
"We obviously are not going to pay attention to a sunset administration. Zimbabwe's fate lies in the hands of Zimbabweans," he added.
Zimbabwe is currently reeling under a severe economic and political crisis, and is struggling to contain a massive cholera outbreak because of a shortage of water purification chemicals, drugs, medical supplies and health professionals in the country.
Last week, the UN had reported that the cholera epidemic has claimed 1,111 lives out of the 20,581 infected cases reported in Zimbabwe since August. Also, the UNICEF said Tuesday the cholera deaths has risen to 1,174.
Various health and relief agencies have blamed poor sanitation and shortage of safe drinking water for the spreading of the water-borne disease and have warned that the outbreak could spread quickly if safe water and proper sanitation were not provided immediately.
The ongoing economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe is widely credited to Mugabe's failure to form a unity government involving the opposition, as per a previously agreed power-sharing deal reached in September.
The deal was aimed at ending the ongoing political crisis and to pull back the impoverished African country from an economic collapse.
However, repeated power-sharing negotiations ended deadlocked with the opposition MDC accusing President Mugabe's Zanu PF party of refusing to share important portfolios with them in the proposed unity government.
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