President Robert Mugabe, 84, was sworn in for a new five-year term on Sunday after election authorities announced he had won a landslide victory in a one-candidate presidential run-off ballot that was boycotted by the opposition.

"Kenya is Kenya. Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe. We have our own history of evolving dialogue and resolving political impasses the Zimbabwean way. The Zimbabwean way, not the Kenyan way. Not at all," Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba told journalists at an African Union summit in Egypt.

"The way out is a way defined by the Zimbabwe people, free from outside interference, and that is exactly what will resolve the matter," he said.

South Africa is close to brokering a deal that would see Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai negotiate a unity government, a South African newspaper said.

The report came as African leaders discussed the Zimbabwe crisis at the AU summit in Sharm El-Sheikh amid calls for the continent to condemn Mugabe for holding the election, which was marred by violence.

African leaders are expected to push for talks on a power-sharing deal between Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF and Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change.

WEST CAN 'GO HANG'

Charamba harangued Western nations who have called for Mugabe to step down.

"They can go and hang. They can go to hang a million times. They have no claim on Zimbabwean politics, not at all," he said, adding that Mugabe had a mandate from Zimbabwean voters.

"Five days haven't even expired, not even a week after a fresh manifest from the Zimbabwean people, you are posing questions for retirement?" he said.

So far only Western powers have imposed financial and travel sanctions against the Zimbabwean leader and his top officials. U.S. President George W. Bush has called the election a sham and said he will ask for more sanctions, including an arms embargo.

Some African leaders, seen as having more sway with Mugabe, have called for a power-sharing deal like the one that ended a deadly post-election crisis in Kenya earlier this year. But the former opposition leader who benefited from that deal, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, has emerged in recent days as one of Mugabe's harshest critics on the continent.

On Tuesday, Charamba rejected Odinga's comments -- and accused him of being personally responsible for the violence in Kenya,

"I hope you realise that Prime Minister Raila Odinga's hands drip with blood, raw African blood." he said. "And that blood is not going to be cleansed by any amount of abuse of Zimbabwe. Not at all."