By Wangui Kanina and Duncan Miriri
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Police fired teargas at a group of pro-opposition women who blocked a main road in a Nairobi suburb during a protest march.
Washington's top Africa diplomat, Jendayi Frazer, flew back to Kenya late on Wednesday to continue her efforts to break an impasse between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who says Kibaki's Dec. 27 re-election was rigged.
The announcement of Kibaki's win, reversing Odinga's early count lead, triggered bloodletting that displaced over 250,000 people, dented the stable reputation of east Africa's biggest economy and disrupted essential supplies to nearby countries.
Odinga met African Union Chairman John Kufuor, Frazer and the U.S. ambassador to Kenya on Thursday at a Nairobi hotel, along with four former African heads of state also trying to mediate.
Odinga's camp and Britain's high commissioner to Kenya broke off for what an Odinga aide called "private consultations".
Kufuor had spent Wednesday shuttling between Kibaki and Odinga. The Ghanaian president's spokesman said the opposition leader had discussed forming a transitional government, a vote recount and a new poll as possible options to end the crisis.
Kibaki has maintained a hard line despite inviting Odinga to direct talks on Friday -- an offer the opposition leader has rejected unless it is internationally mediated.
Kibaki insisted on Wednesday the poll result would stand and has cast Kufuor's mission as fact-finding rather than mediation.
Kenya's top newspapers, the Daily Nation and the Standard, said in Thursday editorials that talks had made scant progress.
OPPOSITION WOMEN TEARGASSED
Around 70 pro-opposition women marched and blocked a main road in Nairobi's Hurlingham suburb on Thursday. Some lay down, stripped to their bras and shouted "Shame on you" at riot police who tapped their batons on their plastic shields.
Police fired teargas to disperse the women, including one who clutched a small baby to her bosom as she fled.
Previously regarded as a gentlemanly leader with a passion for golf, Kibaki has shown a steely side to Odinga, a former political prisoner and wealthy business owner who helped Kibaki win a 2002 poll but was sacked from government in 2005.
Even as he welcomed Kufuor on Tuesday evening, Kibaki named half his new cabinet in a pre-recorded TV announcement, trimming prospects for any power-sharing deal and igniting further ethnic violence in pro-Odinga towns and slums in the capital Nairobi.
American envoy Frazer spoke to Kibaki about the move, a U.S. State Department spokesman said.
"The perception was he was trying to put in place a political fait accompli," the spokesman said. "We expressed our displeasure, we were quite disappointed."
Kibaki told Frazer the step was intended only to keep the government running while there was a negotiated political settlement to the crisis, the spokesman said.
Kenya's state-funded National Commission on Human Rights presented a petition to police on Thursday demanding a criminal investigation into alleged abuses by the electoral commission.
"It's a complaint for them to investigate offences against the election act," commission chairman Maina Kiai told Reuters.
Washington has said the poll was obviously flawed and Britain said it was plagued by irregularity.
Both Kibaki's and Odinga's parties say they will be able to mobilise a majority in parliament -- and Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) has threatened to occupy the government side of the chamber when parliament opens on Jan. 15.
Post-election violence has spawned a humanitarian crisis in a country more used to hosting refugees from conflict in nearby states and acting as a conduit for international aid in Africa.
Officials have said 486 people have died in election-related clashes between police and protesters, ethnic fighting, and looting. But aid workers put the figure at more than 500, and the opposition say the toll could be nearer 1,000.
Source: Reuters, Jan 10, 2007