By Mabvuto Banda
LILONGWE (Reuters) - Malawi's parliament has been suspended while the government and opposition hold talks to avert a political crisis that threatens to derail international donor programmes, senior officials said on Friday.
"Parliament has not met for three days now because of the talks and I have been asked to adjourn until next week," parliament speaker Louis Chimango told Reuters.
President Bingu wa Mutharika invited the opposition leadership for talks this week to end an impasse over the right of parliamentarians to switch their party allegiance -- a sensitive issue which led to a 5-day opposition boycott of the assembly which ended on Tuesday.
Chimango has come under pressure to resign for not expelling more than 70 MPs who defected to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The United Democratic Front (UDF) and Malawi Congress Party (MCP), which together form a majority in parliament, want to remove the defecting DPP lawmakers under a constitutional provision that bans parliamentarians from switching parties.
Chimango's refusal to remove the MPs for three years has led to political uncertainty. The latest dispute may delay debate of the 2008/2009 budget due in about three weeks.
"The first meeting was fruitful and we thought we needed more time and asked the speaker to suspend the sitting (of parliament) to give us time to resolve our differences," the leader of the government bloc in parliament, Henry Chimunthu Banda, told Reuters.
The UDF representative at the talks, George Ntafu, said that unless the government agreed to implement the provision banning party defections, the talks would fail.
If the ban takes effect, the opposition would have the two-thirds majority needed to impeach wa Mutharika, but opposition leaders say they do not plan to seek his removal.
Under wa Mutharika, the country of 12 million people has won praise and billions of dollars in debt relief for reforms that have steered healthy economic growth.
But political bickering has overshadowed those gains. Wa Mutharika's rule has been troubled since he took office in 2004, after winning an election marred by violent protests and opposition allegations of rigging.
