(Updates throughout with quotes, details)

By Angelika Stricker and Henrique Almeida

LISBON, Dec 8 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel challenged European and African leaders on Saturday to confront human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, putting the country's president Robert Mugabe in the spotlight at an EU-Africa summit.

Her comments brought to the surface simmering disagreement over human rights at the first such summit in seven years, where European and African leaders met to try to forge a new partnership between the two continents.

With Mugabe listening, Merkel said the world could not stand by while human rights were "trampled underfoot".

"I appreciate that some African states have tried to solve the crisis in Zimbabwe but time is running out," Merkel told the summit. "The situation of Zimbabwe is damaging the image of the new Africa."

Rights activists, who had urged action at the summit on Zimbabwe and Sudan's Darfur, praised Merkel's comments. Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown boycotted the meeting because of the presence of Mugabe, whom the West accuses of violently suppressing opposition and wrecking his economy.

"Bravo for Merkel, she said what had to be said," said Reed Brody of U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

In his speech to the summit on human rights, South African President Thabo Mbeki did not mention Zimbabwe, where he has tried to mediate between Mugabe and his political foes. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade told reporters: "Zimbabwe is not in the process of collapsing, nor is Mr. Mugabe in the process of collapsing.

"Who can say that human rights are being violated more in Zimbabwe than in other African countries? No one can say that."

Efforts to hold an EU-Africa summit were held up for years since the last meeting in 2000 because of wrangling over Mugabe, who is seen as an independence hero in Africa.

Pressured by China's growing investment and influence in Africa, the Europeans aimed at the summit to agree an action plan to revitalise trade with the world's poorest continent and also to improve cooperation over immigration and peacekeeping.

IMMIGRATION DEBATE

Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero of Spain, whose southern country is in the front line of efforts to stop Africans trying to reach Europe, urged cooperation in education, employment and infrastructure to stop illegal migration from Africa.

"Illegal immigration is the dramatic result of our collective failure," Zapatero told the summit.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said Europe had to solve a problem it had created by colonizing Africa.

"Either you give us back our resources or you invite us into your countries," two EU diplomatic sources quoted him as saying in his speech on immigration.

John Kufuor, president of Ghana and current chairman of the African Union, said the summit would help break and move away from a painful past relationship that included slavery, colonial rule and apartheid. "Europe needs Africa as much as Africa needs Europe," Kufuor said.

The call for a fresh start comes at a time when many African countries' economies are growing more rapidly than in several decades, thanks to a commodities-fuelled boom.

Massive investment by China in Africa in recent years, as Beijing secures raw materials to feed its own booming economy, has added to confidence on the continent and prompted concerns in Europe that it is missing opportunities.

EU-Africa trade is at an especially sensitive juncture, as the EU is rushing to reach new Economic Partnership Agreements with developing nations as replacements for a World Trade Organization waiver due to expire on Dec. 31.

African Union Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare chided the EU for pushing through the new deals with individual nations or groups of nations, to Africa's disadvantage. (Additional reporting by Ruben Bicho, Pascal Fletcher, Angelika Stricker, Elisabete Tavares, Ingrid Melander, Sergio Goncalves and Henrique Almeida; writing by Axel Bugge; editing by Andrew Roche)

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