Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Friday called for peace in the wake of attacks on the premier's party, as tensions rise with expectations for elections next year.

"We want to live in a peaceful country," Mugabe said following a meeting of top leaders in Zimbabwe's unity government called after an attack last weekend on a Tsvangirai rally.

"People must hold their meetings freely. Don't stand in the way of those entitled to hold their meetings, don't campaign against their meetings. Don't force people to come to your meeting," he said.

"We are bound together by our nationality, singing the same national anthem," Mugabe said. "If we could reconcile with the whites, now as fellow blacks, why do we trouble each other, why do we fight?"

Mugabe and Tsvangirai formed a unity government two years ago to stem deadly political violence that erupted during disputed 2008 polls.

The unrest largely subsided, but as possibilities for elections next year have mounted, pro-Mugabe militants began breaking up rural rallies by Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change.

This month, the violence moved into the capital as police fired teargas into the MDC headquarters and pro-Mugabe militants on Sunday stoned a rally by Tsvangirai outside Harare.

"I urge law enforcement agents to begin to take their national responsibilities seriously. State agents, especially the police, must protect the people and not harm the people," Tsvangirai said.

But security chiefs were notably absent from the meeting, noted University of Zimbabwe political analyst John Makumbe.

"The key perpetrators of violence were not part of that meeting -- that is the JOC," the Joint Operations Command bringing together army, police and security chiefs, he said.

"There is no direct instruction by Robert Mugabe to the police and the security lieutenants to stop violence and that anyone who is violent must be arrested," Makumbe said.

"It's all rhetoric, there won't be any change. They are playing to the gallery," Makumbe said.

Under the power-sharing pact, Mugabe retained control of the security forces, which have staunchly backed the 87-year-old, who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.

Tsvangirai, whose supporters suffered more than 200 deaths in 2008, has lobbied hard for reforms in the security forces before any new elections.

The polls are still many months away at best. The unity pact first requires a new constitution to be approved by a referendum, which has yet to be scheduled.

Bitter feuding within the security forces has become a new worry for Zimbabwe, after former army chief Solomon Mujuru was killed in a fire in his farmhouse outside Harare in August.

The results of an inquest into his death have yet to be made public, fuelling public suspicions of arson.

His wife, Vice President Joice Mujuru, leads a more moderate faction of Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, against hardliners led by Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Mugabe has already been endorsed as ZANU-PF's candidate in the elections, but concerns about his health have intensified jockeying among potential successors.

He has travelled to Singapore almost every month this year, amid reports that he suffers prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of his body.