Zimbabwe's main opposition party on Monday welcomed a Commonwealth decision to extend the southern African country's suspension, saying the government of President Robert Mugabe has violated human rights with impunity and deserved the punishment.

But Mugabe's government was likely to use the move, announced Sunday by Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon, as a means of dividing the 54-member Commonwealth along racial lines, one analyst said.

Zimbabwe was originally suspended from the grouping of former British colonies on March 19 last year, after Mugabe was re-elected in polls the Commonwealth claimed were won through violence, intimidation and vote-rigging.

The suspension was due to run out this week but was extended until the Commonwealth heads of government discuss the situation in more detail when they meet in December.

The main opposition party in Zimbabwe, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), welcomed the news.

"Zimbabwe had it coming," Paul Themba Nyathi, spokesman for the MDC, told AFP.

"A government that has made it an article of faith to violate human rights with impunity deserves to be suspended from the Commonwealth," he added.

But political commentator John Makumbe warned that Mugabe's government would not take the move lying down, and predicted the government would view the suspension as a unilateral decision taken against it by the white Commonwealth.

"I think Mugabe is going to exploit this decision along racial lines and look for ways of racially dividing the Commonwealth," Makumbe told AFP.

He added: "Mugabe will find it very difficult to get the whole of the non-white Commonwealth to support him on this one." The decision to extend the suspension came as a surprise since two members of a specially-convened troika responsible for suspending Zimbabwe in the first place were known to be in support of readmitting Zimbabwe.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa supported Zimbabwe's readmittance. Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, the third member, wanted Zimbabwe to remain suspended.

Obasanjo expressed his support for Zimbabwe's readmittance to the grouping in a letter he wrote last month to Howard, outlining progress the Nigerian leader said Harare had made in addressing the Commonwealth's concerns.

Those concerns were outlined Sunday by McKinnon as Harare's controversial land reforms, which "cannot be separated from other issues of concern to the Commonwealth such as the rule of law, respect for human rights, democracy and the economy." Critics of Mugabe's government and opposition members in Zimbabwe support Howard's view that those issues have not been addressed.

The opposition MDC has on an almost daily basis reported alleged attacks against or unlawful arrests of its supporters.

And white farmers' groups in the country dispute Obasanjo's claim that the seizure of their farms under the country's controversial land reform programme is over.

Colin Cloete, president of the white-dominated Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) has said that, since August last year, when the programme officially ended, more than 300 farms have been listed for government acquisition.

The farmers' union has said its members continue to be evicted from their land, despite some of them still having crops waiting to be harvested.

Last week the government rounded on its detractors, whom it accuses of trying to promote the interests of former colonial power Britain at the expense of its sovereignty.

In a pre-emptive editorial against McKinnon, the state-controlled Herald newspaper claimed a damning report on Zimbabwe about to be circulated by the Commonwealth secretary general among the members of the troika had been authored by the British.

And on Monday, the Herald claimed in a front page report that mass action planned for this week by the opposition was deliberately timed to coincide with the release of that report - Sapa-AFP.