UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The United States said Tuesday it was confident proposed sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's regime would be adopted by the UN Security Council this week despite strong objections from South Africa and Russia.

"Absent a veto (from Russia) which we do not anticipate, the votes are there" for passage, US ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters after closed-door council consultations on his sanctions draft resolution.

The draft would slap a travel ban and an assets freeze on Mugabe and 13 of his cronies as well as an arms embargo on the Harare regime.

"We want to go to a vote on the resolution as soon as possible ... this week," Khalilzad said.

A resolution requires nine votes out of 15 and no veto from any of the five permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said elements of the US draft were "quite excessive" and clearly "in conflict with the notion of sovereignty" of a UN member state.

He also questioned whether the crisis spawned by Zimbabwe's flawed, one-man presidential runoff vote on June 27 amounted to a threat to international peace and security.

And he noted that G8 leaders meeting in Japan made no reference to sanctions against the Mugabe regime.

"We do not accept the legitimacy of any government that does not reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people," the G8 leaders said in a joint statement issued at their summit on Japan's northern Hokkaido island Tuesday.

"We will take further steps, inter alia introducing financial and other measures against those individuals responsible for the violence," they added.

A senior Russian official however said earlier Tuesday that Moscow was opposed to new sanctions on Zimbabwe.

Khalilzad told reporters that council experts were to meet behind closed doors later Tuesday to try to fine-tune the draft to make it more acceptable to some members but made clear that no substantive changes were contemplated.

He stressed that sanctions were needed to push the Mugabe regime to stop the violence and start substantive negotiations with the opposition led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

But South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, whose country is mediating the Zimbabwe crisis on behalf of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), insisted that UN sanctions were not needed and "would create more complications."

Mugabe, 84, who has been in power 28 years, was re-elected to a sixth term with more than 85 percent of the vote in last month's run-off poll that was widely denounced as a sham and marred by state-sponsored violence against the Tsvangirai-led opposition.

Tsvangirai, who won the first round of the poll on March 29 but fell short of a majority, pulled out of the contest citing a campaign of violence and intimidation.

Meanwhile Asha-Rose Migiro, the UN deputy secretary general, briefed the Council on last week's African Union (AU) summit in Egypt which she attended and at which leaders called for a government of national unity in Zimbabwe.

Noting that Zimbabwe's "flawed" June 27 election won by Mugabe "produced illegitimate results," she said: "The creation of a government of national unity, as a way forward, enjoys broad support in the region."

Migiro added that Ban "strongly supports this recommendation and calls for a speedy establishment ... of a mechanism on the ground to support mediation efforts."

This appears to be a reference to the possible appointment of an African special representative to assist the SADC mediation.

Diplomatic sources said former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who helped broker a power-sharing agreement in Kenya last February, former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano, Nigerian ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and Ghanaian President John Kufuor were being considered for the mission.

Migiro also said UN chief Ban Ki-moon was very concerned about the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe, where "if unattended the food shortage could leave 5.1 million people at grave risk."

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