Tony Blair has denied ever planning to intervene in Zimbabwe and topple Robert Mugabe after Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s former president, claimed that he was asked to help such an operation.

The former Prime Minister took the unusual step of denying Mr Mbeki’s version of events, recounted in an interview with al-Jazeera.

When Zimbabwe sank into economic collapse and political repression in 2000, South Africa and Britain had starkly different views over how to respond. Mr Mbeki favoured a negotiated settlement; Mr Blair wanted Mr Mugabe to go.

“The problem was, we were speaking from different positions,” remembered Mr Mbeki. “There were other people saying ‘yes indeed there are political problems, economic problems, the best way to solve them is regime change. So Mugabe must go’. This was the difference. So they said ‘Mugabe must go’. But we said ‘Mugabe is part of the solution to this problem’.”

Mr Mbeki recalled that Lord Guthrie, who was Chief of the Defence Staff throughout Mr Blair’s first government, said in 2007 that “people were always trying to get me to look at” the option of toppling Mr Mugabe by force.