Stripping ambassador to come back home

President Robert Mugabe will recall Jacqueline Zwambila, Zimbabwe's ambassador to Australia who has been accused of stripping down to her underclothes before male embassy staff members, the Herald reported on Wednesday.

Zwambila, denies the charges and says they are politically motivated.

But officials have now completed an investigation into her conduct and the decision to recall her "was reached last month," said the official newspaper.

Zwambila is from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which shares power with Mugabe's Zanu-PF in an uneasy 31-month-old coalition.

"It [the decision] was communicated to the [MDC] leader Morgan Tsvangirai so that he recommends another person to take up the posting. He has however up to now not responded to that communication," said the paper, quoting high government sources.

Zwambila was accused of stripping in front of male embassy staff loyal to Mugabe to punish them for leaking information about her to an Australian-based columnist for Zimbabwe's Herald, which is controlled by top Zanu-PF officials.

For an older woman to remove her clothes in the presence of younger males is regarded as an act of protest that is highly insulting in the local Shona culture.

Zwambila is also accused of summoning her butler to her bedroom to order a Coke, when she was dressed only in her underclothes.

The ambassador's lawyers in Australia - where Zwambila has launched a lawsuit against the columnist - say the accusations are defamatory and that politics is "at the heart of the case".