Tsvangirai's ministers met separately in Harare as Mugabe chaired the weekly cabinet session without his ZANU-PF party's main government partners.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader flew to Mozambique Tuesday to ask southern African leaders to step in, after he cut ties with Mugabe's "dishonest and unreliable" camp four days ago.
"The prime minister came to ask for (the Southern African Development Community) SADC's intervention," spokeswoman for Mozambican leader Armando Guebuza, Marlene Magaia, told AFP after the two leaders held talks.
"President Guebuza is head of the SADC defence and security body, and (Tsvangirai) is not very happy with the current situation in Zimbabwe, so he came to request the intervention of this body."
Tsvangirai was set to return to South Africa from Mozambique with plans to also meet Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila, chairman of SADC, and Angola's President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
President Jacob Zuma's office has yet to receive an official request to meet the South African leader, a spokesman said late today.
"Their request for a meeting will be considered if they request it," Zuma's spokesman said.
Speaking in Johannesburg, Zimbabwean minister of state in Tsvangirai's office Gorden Moyo said the MDC will not quit the unity partnership of eight months which was brokered through SADC mediation.
"We can't pull out of ourselves. We won the elections," Moyo said, referring to last year's disputed polls that plunged the country into deeper chaos.
"We want to put pressure on ZANU-PF" by withdrawing from the cabinet meeting, he said.
The suspension of ties has cast a shadow on the fragile partnership, with Mugabe chairing a business-as-usual cabinet meeting on Tuesday as Tsvangirai's 13 cabinet ministers met separately.
"The MDC ministers held a meeting at the party headquarters while ZANU-PF ministers held a ZANU-PF minister caucus meeting elsewhere," the MDC said.
The state-run Herald newspaper on Tuesday quoted Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba as saying no notice of Tsvangirai's withdrawal had been received.
"From that point of view nothing has happened. Until the communication is done formally the president has no reason or any grounds to think or know otherwise."
Under the powersharing agreement brokered after months of wrangling, Mugabe's ZANU-PF is in charge of 15 ministries and Tsvangirai's MDC has 13. A smaller MDC faction has three.
MDC spokesman and cabinet minister Nelson Chamisa said that any decisions made at Tuesday's meeting would not be binding. "The matter is now in the hands of SADC and the AU (African Union) who are guarantors of this agreement," he said.
Tsvangirai said he would only resume unity relations once unresolved issues are settled which include disputes over key posts and a crackdown against his supporters.
His withdrawal came after the renewed detention on terror charges of his aide, Roy Bennett, who will go on trial on November 9.
After years of economic freefall, Zimbabwe has seen an easing of international ties and rebuilding of shattered infrastructure and social services but donors said they want to see more reforms before increasing aid.
Five cholera deaths were reported Tuesday in a fresh outbreak of the water-borne disease which killed more than 4,000 people in 11 months to July.
The United Nations warned in August that the nation's crumbling infrastructure made another outbreak almost inevitable.
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