HARARE Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Saturday defended new laws that force companies to hand control of their businesses to black Zimbabweans, and warned Western investors to keep their hands off Zimbabwe's mineral wealth.    

Mugabe was speaking at celebrations to mark his 86th birthday, which fell on February 21.    

Zimbabwe's leader of 30 years likened the new indigenization regulations to the lawless seizures of white-owned farms by new black farmers since 2000.    

"Our indigenization policy, like the land reform programme, is meant to correct historical imbalances in the ownership of our resources," Mugabe told thousands of guests at the showgrounds in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, where he blew out candles on a big cake.    

"They (Western investors) want our gold, platinum, diamonds, uranium, our land, but we say 'No!' Zimbabwe is ours, you will not take it," he said.    

Zimbabwe would need "partners from outside," he said, but these would be "partners of our choice, not imposed."    

Under the terms of the indigenization regulations, companies with assets of over 500,000 US dollars have 45 days to explain to the government how they will transfer 51 per cent of their assets to black Zimbabweans.    

The law was passed in 2008 before Mugabe entered a coalition government with his longtime foe, current Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, but regulations to give it effect were only published this month by a minister in Mugabe's party.    

Tsvangirai has dismissed the regulations as "null and void", arguing that, as head of policy implementation, he should have been consulted before they were published.     Many investors have expressed fear their businesses will be seized without compensation in the same way most of the country's white commercial farmers were dispossessed.    

Investors have shown particular interest in Zimbabwe's rich
 deposits of platinum and alluvial diamonds.    

Meanwhile, Mugabe, who was endorsed by Zanu-PF to represent the party in the next presidential elections, although that could see him wield power into his nineties, has given no indication he plans to retire.    

The usually fit former liberation leader, whose populist policies are blamed for turning what was once one of Africa's richest countries into one of the poorest, appeared tired as he addressed thousands of children and party members in his native Shona on Saturday.    

Although the economy has picked up a little since Zanu-PF began to share power with Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) a year ago, Western food aid is still needed to keep some 2.7 million people from going hungry in the one-time "breadbasket of Africa."

By Staff reporter and agencies