The Commonwealth summit limped to a close on Monday on a sour note of crisis and recrimination after Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe angrily pulled his troubled country out of the world body.

Mugabe's decision made a mockery of a three-day wrangle at the Nigeria meeting over whether to lift Zimbabwe's suspension, a row threatening to split the club of mainly former British colonies on quasi-racial lines.

Summit host President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria criticised delegates from both sides of the Zimbabwe divide who he said arrived with unhelpful hardline positions which had poisoned the debate.

Despite delegates pleading that the issue not dominate the summit agenda, the row dragged on until nightfall Sunday, when they agreed on a plan to extend the suspension indefinitely, subject to review by a six-nation panel.

Mugabe's response was contemptuous, and deeply damaging to the credibility of the world body which saw its last day of talks among 52 leaders in Abuja upstaged by the showmanship of the autocratic leader.

But Obasanjo, a former military dictator who is emerging as a top African mediator only four years after his country returned to the Commonwealth, said the door to Zimbabwe remained open and denied the summit had been a waste.

"The measures that we've put in place to facilitate the quick return to the Commonwealth remain as relevant as if they had not decided to quit," he said.

Harare was suspended in March last year after 79-year-old Mugabe was voted back into office in an election marred by ballot-rigging and violence.

Australia said Commonwealth leaders took the decision to continue the ban in the full knowledge that Mugabe was planning his coup de theatre.

The impoverished southern African state is only the second country to withdraw from the Commonwealth after the South African regime of Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, quit in 1961. It rejoined in 1994.

Zimbabwe's supporters, led by South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, had opposed the continuing suspension, arguing that Mugabe should be encouraged to reform by being reinstated.

But the "white Commonwealth" of Britain, Australia and New Zealand favoured a tough line, and won the support of a largely silent majority of Caribbean, Asian and Pacific states, along with some Africans.

Mugabe has been accused of human rights abuses, political repression and a controversial land policy that has helped drive Zimbabwe to the brink of ruin, facing desperate food shortages and threatened expulsion from the International Monetary Fund.

Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon said although the summit had stuck to its principles and sought to remain engaged with Zimbabwe "we see it as a bit of a failure." The Commonwealth also came under fire from Pakistan, which said the summit decision to prolong the 1999 suspension of the Islamic republic after President Pervez Musharraf seized power in a military coup smacked of "discrimination." At the close of the summit, leaders issued a statement covering a range of other topics on the four-day agenda, but their calls for an end to farm subsidies, the revival of world trade talks and greater efforts in the fight against AIDS were light on concrete action plans.

Instead, the Zimbabwe issue loomed large.

Mozambique's President Joaquim Chissano warned that isolation would not help Zimbabwe's woes and accused the group that was born of the British empire of adopting "pressure and punishment" tactics.

He said older members could not understand the situation of those trying to build democracy in states only recently emerging from the rule of "abject racialist powers".

New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark placed the blame at Mugabe's door, saying: "Zimbabwe's government seems determined to thumb its nose at international opinion.

"The Zimbabwe government's decision to withdraw is not a disaster for the Commonwealth. It is an indictment of Zimbabwe's government that it has chosen this path," she said - Sapa-AFP