LISBON - Leaders from Europe and Africa hold their first summit for seven years on Saturday, their difficult relations strained further over the presence at the talks of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

The heads of state of the world's largest trading bloc and its poorest continent are to approve an ambitious action plan intended to revitalise trade and improve cooperation in sensitive areas like immigration and peacekeeping.

Even before the summit started, differences over getting new trade deals in place and over the attendance of Mugabe -- accused by the West of ruling like a dictator and wrecking his country's economy -- clouded the atmosphere in Lisbon.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is boycotting the summit because of Mugabe's presence, depriving the weekend meeting of high-level representation from a major former colonial power in Africa. The Czech president also stayed away.

Previous attempts to hold the summit have failed over the question of Mugabe's attendance but this time the EU, mindful of growing Chinese influence in Africa, lifted its travel ban on the Zimbabwean president. He arrived late on Thursday.

Host Portugal, the current EU chairman, played down the controversy over Mugabe, saying there would be "no taboos" and that the meeting would not shy away from points of friction.

EU officials were keen to emphasize the need for the summit.

"Africa and Europe are two neighbouring continents, rich in a complex history. They are today determined to forge a new partnership and give up their sterile relation between the donor of the North and the beneficiary of the South," EU Aid and Development Commissioner Louis Michel said.

"At long last, a win-win political partnership".

The last time leaders convened at this high level was in 2000 in Egypt.

"The very fact it's the first summit in seven years between a re-organised African Union and an enlarged Europe -- that's 90 percent of the achievement," one European diplomat said.

CHILDREN DYING

Human rights and aid groups are pressing leaders to come up with more than rhetoric and to take action to help end festering conflicts like the one in Sudan's Darfur and poverty across Africa.

UK charity Save the Children said almost all the two continents' states were failing on past commitments to dedicate a certain level of official funds to aid and healthcare.

"Almost five million children under the age of five die each year in sub-Saharan Africa," said Martin Kirk, Save the Children's Head of Campaigns and Advocacy.

"The only way for millions more children to grow up healthy is for all governments to fulfil their promises to increase health funding, so that essential basic healthcare reaches the poorest children in the poorest communities," he added.

African and European leaders are at odds over the EU's insistence that African states sign new Economic Partnership Agreements by December 31 before the expiry of a World Trade Organization waiver of current preferential treatment.

Some African nations have complained they will face too much competition and are being strong-armed into signing new deals.

"We can't be forced into a straitjacket, it doesn't work like that," Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said in an interview with French television.

Michel said the Economic Partnership Agreements would benefit Africa.

"These people refuse to face reality, the reality of the global economy where one must absolutely be competitive. There is no alternative to trade liberalisation," he said.