HARARE, Zimbabwe — Anyone who had been hoping the swearing-in of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister would bring a degree of stability to Zimbabwe has been sorely disappointed.

If anything, the power struggle between President Robert Mugabe and Tsvangirai appears to be intensifying as they size each other up in the shaky month-old inclusive government.

The two former protagonists have been issuing conflicting statements regarding government policy and jockeying for power, even as the country struggles to secure financial lifelines.

Analysts say the agreement, signed last September, that created the current unity government made such disputes inevitable by creating two separate centers of power within the government.

The trouble began almost as soon as the new prime minister was sworn in.

Mugabe first irked Tsvangirai by unilaterally appointing permanent cabinet secretaries without consulting the prime minister.

Then, he refused to revoke the unilateral appointment of such key government figures as the head of the country's central bank.

And finally, Mugabe moved to sanction a fresh round of farm seizures, which has led to security forces removing the country's few remaining white farmers from their properties.

This move flies in the face of a ruling by the Southern African Development Community tribunal, which had ordered such confiscations to cease.

But a defiant Mugabe insisted that the regional tribunal, based in Namibia, had no jurisdiction over land disputes inside Zimbabwe.

"It does not matter that the white farmers went to the SADC tribunal," he told a crowd gathered to celebrate his 85th birthday. "That is nonsense. A foreign court in Namibia cannot decide the issue of land. The white farmers must vacate the farms." Only days earlier, Tsvangirai had called such expulsions illegal.

"The new wave of illegal land invasions are undermining our ability to revive our agricultural sector and restore investor confidence," Tsvangirai said. "I have asked the ministers of home affairs to bring the full weight of the law down on the perpetrators who continue to act within a culture of impunity and entitlement. No person in Zimbabwe is above the law." Tsvangirai also lashed out at Mugabe's appointment of permanent cabinet chiefs, describing the move as unilateral. He added that the appointments had "no force of law" and were therefore null and void.

The power struggle has extended to members of their respective political parties.

Nelson Chamisa, a member of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change and the minister of information and communication technology, practically came to blows with Webster Shamu, a member of Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and the minister of media, information and publicity.

Analysts doubt that conditions will improve under the current power-sharing arrangement.

Eldred Masunungure, a professor of political science at the University of Zimbabwe, said the agreement that created the current government was ambiguous on the separation of powers between the president and the prime minister.

Ernest Mudzengi, a Harare-based political analyst, agrees. "The whole process (regarding the power-sharing deal) was not transparent. It was not in the true spirit of power-sharing," he said.

He's also not optimistic about the future.

"If people think that the power struggles will end soon, it is a mirage," he said. "In fact we are going to see more of these squabbles."

Jabu Shoko is a reporter in Zimbabwe who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict.