HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe's highest court Thursday ordered the government to remove squatters from hundreds of white-owned farms and the country's leadership responded by broadcasting a radio appeal for the protesters to leave.
The appeal by Vice President Joseph Msika was the latest move in Zimbabwe's land crisis: Some 50,000 squatters refuse to give up the farms, defiance that has left farmers and opposition groups demanding police action.
Msika's statement sought to head off a constitutional crisis between the judiciary and the government of President Robert Mugabe, who is in Cuba for a summit.
The High Court has ordered the government to evict the squatters from more than 900 farms. The government has defied the order, with Mugabe calling the occupations a justified protest against unfair ownership of much of the country's productive land by 4,000 whites.
But Thursday, Msika appealed to squatters to leave the farms and said the government wanted to end the tense stalemate amicably. The vice president stopped short of committing the government to obeying the court order and removing the squatters.
Mugabe's government has argued that police action against the squatters - who are armed with clubs, knives, spears and guns - could trigger a civil war. However, the High Court said Thursday the rule of law must be observed. It ordered the government to obey the earlier court order to end the farm occupations.
''We are encouraged'' by the court's ruling, said David Hasluck, director of the Commercial Farmers' Union representing about 4,000 mostly white farmers.
The standoff in Zimbabwe combines elements of racial tension and economic crisis.
The farm occupations, which began in early February, come in a nation where a few whites own one-third of the productive land while most blacks are landless and impoverished. The squatters are led by men who claim to be veterans of the bush war that led to this nation's independence in 1980.
Mugabe set up the standoff more than two months ago. Stung by his defeat in a constitutional referendum in February, he publicly warned that landless blacks impatient with the slow pace of land reform would seize white farms.
Within days, thousands of armed men occupied farms across the country. Many of the squatters are being paid to occupy the farms, and some said they were paid by ruling party activists.
Many of the farm takeovers were violent. The Commercial Farmers' Union has reported dozens of assaults on members' farms. Several farmers have been severely beaten, and death threats have been widespread.
On Thursday, Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of the main war veterans association, said he had received no instructions from the court or the government to withdraw from the farms. Hunzvi, who earlier said his followers would return to war to keep the farms, refused to say how his group would respond to the new order and the vice president's appeal.
Isaac Maphosa, an official of the National Constitutional Assembly, an alliance of opposition and reform groups, said doubts lingered over whether the police would implement the court order to evict the squatters.
Police have said they lack the manpower and equipment, including tear gas, to carry out the order. On Monday, Attorney General Patrick Chinamasa said the 20,000-strong police force would be unable to evict an estimated 50,000 squatters.
Police action ''would be a match that would ignite the country into a bloody conflagration,'' he said.
The government could seek to delay any action by appealing the order to the Supreme Court, the nation's highest court.
If police continue to delay, ''the courts must stand their ground, or we will be completely finished,'' Maphosa said. ''The order to end this must come from Mugabe himself.''
Mugabe's overwhelming majority in the parliament, where he controls 147 of the 150 seats, gives him the power to defy the judiciary without threat of impeachment.
Welshman Ncube, a law professor at the Zimbabwe University, said government refusal to enforce laws has created a constitutional crisis. ''Mugabe is using state institutions to perpetuate lawlessness and anarchy,'' Ncube said.
Mugabe's declared intention to seize white-owned farms without paying compensation has put him at odds with Western governments such as Britain and the United States, which have pressured him to follow the rule of law in land reform.
This is not the first time Mugabe has used land reform as a political tool. More than two years ago, he promised to seize white farms as a way to appease angry war veterans. The veterans were demonstrating against the government because corrupt officials and their relatives had stolen millions of dollars from the veteran's pension fund, leaving it bankrupt.
Under international pressure from donor countries, Mugabe backed off and agreed to compensate farmers for any seized property.
But months later, when a currency crisis triggered high inflation and food riots in Harare, Mugabe again renewed the threat to seize land.
