Zimbabwe's Mugabe speech was meant to sanitise army intervention - sources

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe agreed to resign on Sunday but his ruling ZANU-PF party did not want him to quit in front of the military, an act that would have made its intervention look like a coup, two senior political sources said on Monday.

"It would have looked extremely bad if he had resigned in front of those generals. It would have created a huge amount of mess," one senior source within ZANU-PF said.

Another political source said the speech was meant to "sanitise" the military's action.

(Reporting by Joe Brock and Ed Cropley; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by James Macharia)