Enlarge 

Dictator Robert Mugabe at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation summit in Roma this week, despite widespread criticism

Gordon Brown has rejected angry calls to strip murderous dictator Robert Mugabe of his honorary knighthood.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg urged the Prime Minister to remove the honour to press the Zimbabwean president's 'odious regime to heel'.

But Mr Brown warned that revoking the title, awarded by John Major's Tory government in 1994, would undermine Government efforts to force the tyrant to end human rights abuses, including beating, torturing and killing opponents.

Ironically, at the same time as Mr Brown was speaking at Westminster, in Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was being detained by Mugabe's police thugs.

Tsvangirai, who returned to the country recently despite a possible threat to his life, was held at a roadblock and was still in custody last night. No charges were laid.

Aides said it was a blatant attempt to derail his campaign for the presidential election runoff against Mugabe on June 27.

Mr Brown's decision came amid fury that 84-year-old Mugabe had managed to steal the limelight by grandstanding at a United Nations food summit in Rome.

Despite condemning millions of his people to hunger through food shortages provoked by the seizure of white farms, he blamed Britain - Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler - for the crisis.

Critics have ramped up the pressure on Downing Street to send a signal to Mugabe by removing his honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.

During Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons, Mr Clegg said: 'We have all been appalled by the grotesque spectacle of Robert Mugabe lecturing the world on food security just as his government is blocking the distribution of food aid to his own people.

Enlarge 

Gordon Brown was urged to remove Mugabe's honour, awarded in 1994

Enlarge 

Nick Clegg speaking at Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday

'What message does it send that a man who brought ruin and starvation to his country continues to be honoured by a knighthood from ours?'

But Mr Brown said he was 'less interested in the symbols than the substance' of tackling the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Zimbabwe.

He said: 'We will of course look at every action we can take but the first thing to do is to make sure these elections are free and fair.'

Calling for international observers to be allowed to monitor the vote, he added: 'Zimbabwe deserves to have a government that is fully democratically elected and put in place and that is where I'll put my efforts.'