President Robert Mugabe suggested today Zimbabwe could quit the Commonwealth if membership threatened the African country's sovereignty.
Zimbabwe was suspended from the 54-member Commonwealth last year after Mr Mugabe claimed victory in a poll that the opposition and Western groups said was rigged.
Mr Mugabe insists he won the election fairly, but nevertheless has been excluded from next month's Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM) in Nigeria. The Commonwealth groups Britain and mainly former British colonies.
Zimbabwe accuses what it calls the "white" section of the Commonwealth, led by Britain and Australia, of pursuing a vendetta because of Mr Mugabe's seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
"If our sovereignty is what we have to lose to be readmitted into the Commonwealth, well we will say goodbye to the Commonwealth, and perhaps the time has now come to say so," Mr Mugabe said at a state funeral in Harare.
Britain and Australia have been determined to keep Mr Mugabe away from the heads of government meeting in the Nigerian capital Abuja next month, while several African members have tried to include him.
Mr Mugabe (79), in power since independence from Britain in 1980, says his local and international opponents have sabotaged Zimbabwe's economy to punish him for the land programme.
But his critics say he has mismanaged the economy, leading to chronic shortages of food, foreign currency and fuel, record unemployment and soaring inflation.