HARARE -- A barrage of last-minute protests from around the world failed to stop Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe from waging a further crackdown on the country's opposition movement on the eve of a national election that threatens to plunge the country into chaos.

Despite warnings from the United States, Britain and groups in neighbouring South Africa, Mr. Mugabe's government and ruling party continued yesterday to round up opposition polling agents, make wholesale changes to the voters list and obstruct a legal challenge to a host of disputed electoral-law changes.

In the capital, Harare, where the opposition appears to enjoy a commanding lead, the government cut in half the number of polling stations it had planned, and moved them to pro-Mugabe areas in the countryside. A non-governmental group in Zimbabwe also said the names of hundreds of dead people appeared on one voters list.

As Zimbabweans go to the polls today and tomorrow to elect a president, the prospect of a rigged vote has put the country on a knife's edge and sounded alarms across southern Africa, where many political experts fear bloodshed. The results are not expected to be announced until Tuesday.

"It is clear that the government intends to win the election by any means," U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"This pervasive and profound campaign of violence, intimidation and electoral manipulations makes it very difficult for there to be an untainted election," he said.

The State Department accused Mr. Mugabe's government and the ZANU-PF party of several offences. It said the Zimbabwean military had already forced its personnel to vote in front of commanding officers and to use numbered ballots with their names printed on return envelopes.

Washington also accused Mr. Mugabe's party of unleashing its notorious youth brigades, often with the support of police, on opposition supporters.

Mr. Mugabe, 78, wrapped up his campaign yesterday in rural Bindura with yet another speech dedicated to slamming Britain. After a string of anti-imperialist speeches, which have attempted to connect Zimbabwe's opposition with its former colonial power, he called Prime Minister Tony Blair "an arrogant little fellow," and predicted that voters would give the British leader "a political burial."

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, 49, visited a steel factory and held a rally among workers in an industrial area of Harare. He accused the President of betraying the liberation struggle and destroying his people, and urged Zimbabweans to vote despite "massive intimidation."
Away from the two leaders, political violence continued to escalate. In one incident yesterday morning, 40 polling agents for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change were temporarily abducted by ZANU-PF supporters in a working-class suburb of Harare. According to the party, at least 60 of its polling agents have been arrested this week, and more than 100 supporters have been killed during campaigning.

Zimbabwe's court postponed any decision on changes to electoral law until after the vote, which the opposition said threatens to pitch the country into havoc.

"The country does not want a situation such as is happening in Madagascar," opposition lawyer Adrian de Bourbon said, referring to the island nation's months-long electoral battle that has raised fears of civil war.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of a government appeal that deprives dual citizens of the vote, disqualifying thousands of white people -- many of them from Britain -- and tens of thousands of black farm workers from neighbouring states. An order issued by the government also requires the country's estimated 40,000 white people to prove they have not lost or renounced Zimbabwean citizenship.

Muriel Truter, a Toronto woman, said her mother in Harare was informed in writing this week that she had been struck from the voters list and had "ceased to be a citizen." Her mother was born in South Africa but has lived in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) since 1964, carries a Zimbabwean passport and has voted in several elections, including the 2000 parliamentary contest.

She plans to work today at the Movement for Democratic Change headquarters, said Ms. Truter, who did not want to give her 70-year-old mother's name.

"People are just tired of it," the Toronto woman said. "They're saying, 'If you want to kill me, then kill me, but I'm not going to not vote and I'm certainly not going to be bullied into voting for you.' "

The MDC was frantically trying to get a special newspaper edition printed yesterday listing their polling agents by station because they were obliged to do so. They received an official list of stations from the Electoral Supervisory Commission only the night before.

The MDC was still haggling with electoral officials last night over the accreditation of its 15,400 polling agents. But the opposition lost a critical fight at the Supreme Court, where it has challenged the restrictive electoral laws that Mr. Mugabe imposed on the country this week, in the dying days of the campaign.

Also yesterday, the Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust, a research group, reported the results of a survey that found up to half of the country's voters might have been registered in the wrong districts. The survey of 1,675 voters nationwide found that one in five people polled had moved and will have to travel to their former homes to vote. Of the 540 dead people checked, four in five were still registered as voters.