HARARE, Zimbabwe _ Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who was widely expected to resign Sunday after the ruling party dropped him as leader and threatened to impeach him if he did not leave office, instead said he would remain the country's leader.
Mugabe said on state television that he expected to preside at the party's congress in December.
The ZANU-PF party's central committee met earlier Sunday in Harare and voted to remove Mugabe and replace him with the vice president he dismissed this month, Emmerson Mnangagwa.
The 93-year-old president, who has ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years, was stripped of executive power when the military took control early Wednesday, but he refused to step down.
Mugabe lost the support of the military after he fired Mnangagwa, who has close links with the security services, and planned to install his wife, the unpopular Grace Mugabe, so that she could succeed him. Members of ZANU-PF and the military were outraged by the plan.
Mugabe has been isolated and confined at his house since Wednesday, initially offering to resign before elections due next year, a proposal rejected by the generals.
Mugabe has always insisted he would leave power on his own terms.
The ruling party decision to install Mnangagwa as vice president places him in a position to succeed Mugabe and either lead the ruling party into elections _ or head a transitional government including members of the opposition.
