By Cris Chinaka

Harare - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has pumped fresh blood into his cabinet but power remains firmly with him and his party politburo, analysts said on Sunday.

Mugabe said the new line-up reflected "new thinking" on tackling grave political and economic problems which many Zimbabweans blame squarely on his rule, but analysts said major policy changes were unlikely.

They said Mugabe's line-up also lacked the ethnic balance he tried to maintain in the past for the unity of his Zanu-PF party, and could lead to serious divisions.

His failure to give a post to the war veterans' leader, Chenjerai Hunzvi - who expected one - at a time when mobs of Zanu-PF militants led by the veterans are occupying hundreds of white-owned farms might also prove risky, they said.

Three weeks after his party scraped through its toughest electoral challenge in 20 years of power, Mugabe on Saturday appointed several young technocrats to his government and dropped over a dozen of his old guard.

But analysts were unimpressed. "I just don't see how the new thinking will reflect itself in policy or management terms when those who effectively control the government, that is Mugabe and his politburo, don't seem amenable to any new ideas," said Professor Masipula Sithole, a leading political commentators.

"He has obviously taken in some very respectable figures but I think they will have very little impact unless Mugabe lets them run the show, which is not his style," he said.

Sithole, a political science professor at the University of Zimbabwe, said Mugabe and the 25-member Zanu-PF politburo had already undercut the work of Simba Makon, the new finance and economic development minister, by ruling out a currency devaluation.

Makoni, a minister in the 1980s and for 10 years executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community, is respected internationally and in Zimbabwe's private sector.

"But he is a political lightweight, he does not sit in the politburo and will not be there when the real decisions are being made," Sithole said.

Political commentator Emmanuel Magade, a lecturer in procedural law, said the technocrats would only make an impact if Mugabe changed his outlook and dumped his associates.

"What we have here is an acceptable public relations face, a respectable dress-up but the real test will be on what they are allowed to do," he said.

The previous finance ministers - Bernard Chidzero, Ariston Chambati and Herbert Murerwa - although well espected, lacked the political clout to carry out their programmes.

Western diplomats have said for months the Zimbabwe dollar's valuation is key to a resumption of talks on suspended aid.

The politburo says the unit - pegged artificially at 38 to the US dollar for over a year - will not be devalued soon as this would hurt ordinary people and undermine growth.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other Western donors have withheld aid since 1999 over policy differences, including Mugabe's drive to seize white-owned farms for blacks and his costly intervention in the war in the Congo.

A senior foreign diplomat said Mugabe's hiring of technocrats would not be enough to win an automatic relaxation of conditions for aid.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said the newcomers risked being made scapegoats if the government failed to turn the economy around.

"There may be some people with good technical skills and expertise, but the problem is political, not the lack of technical skills," Tsvangirai told the privately owned weekly Standard newspaper.

"I do not see this cabinet delivering as long as Mugabe is there, and these people will just be sacrificial lambs."

Analysts said Mugabe's failure to reward Hunzvi, who helped his government's re-election strategy by sending veterans into the countryside to invade farms and attack the opposition, could leave some of Hunzvi's men restless.

Hunzvi was unavailable for comment on Sunday, but one analyst said: "Hunzvi and his people expected him to be in government and they may become more difficult to control if they feel used and discarded."

Before the cabinet was announced on Saturday, Hunzvi told a war veterans' rally they would take over all of 804 white farms earmarked for black resettlement unless the government did so.

Zanu-PF won 62 of 120 parliamentary seats contested in the June 24-25 elections while the MDC took 57, the one other going to a smaller opposition party. But the ruling party has boosted its majority with 30 seats allocated to presidential appointees, traditional chiefs and provincial governors. - Reuters