HARARE (Reuters) - Three prominent Zimbabwe bishops have met President Robert Mugabe in an effort to ease political tension between the government and main opposition, state television reported on Saturday.
Zimbabwe is grappling with a deep political and economic crisis which has worsened since Mugabe's controversial re-election last year in a poll rejected as fraudulent by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
In Harare, the opposition said riot police violently broke up large crowds of people trying to withdraw money from banks on Saturday.
The three bishops met Mugabe and senior members of his ruling ZANU-PF party on Friday to discuss how the church could mediate in the country's crisis, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation said on Saturday.
They were Bishops Sebastian Bakare of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, Patrick Mutume of the Catholic Bishops Conference and Trevor Manhanga of the Evangelical Fellowship.
Although they have been vocal on Zimbabwe's problems they have been politically neutral.
"The meeting went extremely well. It became a meeting of people who were at one in terms of the appreciation of the state of affairs in the country and the desire to bring about normalcy," ZANU-PF's national chairman John Nkomo said on television.
Bakare said the meeting was a continuation of discussions between ZANU-PF and Tsvangirai's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change which he said had been going on "at different levels, different groups, different contexts."
"People are trying very hard to find a way to...talk together as one," Bakare said on television.
Mugabe's government walked out of political talks with the MDC in April 2002 after the opposition went to court to challenge the presidential election result, saying mediation efforts must wait until the courts have ruled on the case.
A hearing has been set for November.
The MDC accuses Mugabe of mismanaging the economy over the last 23 years, leading to record unemployment of over 70 percent, one of the highest rates of inflation in the world and lately an acute shortage of local currency which has led to large queues at most banks.
The MDC said riot police dispersed hundreds of people in Harare who had arrived to take out money from banks only to be told there was none available.
"The brutality against innocent people who are seeking their money to buy food for their families is not a positive step... government has no clue whatsoever in what needs to be done to resolve this crisis which has manifested in many shortages of essential needs for the people," the party said in a statement.
Police were not immediately available for comment.
Mugabe, 79, denies mismanaging the economy, and says it has been sabotaged by his local and foreign critics in retaliation for his controversial program to seize white-owned farms for distribution to landless blacks.