News 2008

Odinga: Kibaki, Police Turn Kenya Into 'Killing Fields'

By eNews 20 Staff

12:52, January 19th 2008

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga accused President Mwai Kibaki (picture) and the police of turning the East African country into "killing fields" in their attempt to suppress protests against electoral fraud, in an interview published in Germany Saturday.

Odinga acknowledged that relatively few people had demonstrated against the government in recent days, attributing this to police brutality.

But he said he knew of enough young people willing to resort to armed resistance. "I don't even want to think about this possibility," he told the daily Frankfurter Rundschau.

Odinga said the opposition would go over to boycotting businesses and banks linked to Kibaki's government and talk to the trade unions about calling a strike.

The opposition was not prepared to accept the electoral fraud perpetrated by the government, he said.

But the opposition leader held out the possibility of negotiating a deal with the president along the lines of Germany's grand coalition of the two major parties.

"A joint presidency or a president and a vice president with precisely defined division of powers would be conceivable," he told the newspaper.

Odinga insists the December 27 presidential vote should be recounted and that Kibaki should acknowledge electoral fraud in securing re-election.

The former secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, is to arrive in the country Tuesday to kick off new mediation talks after his visit was postponed this week for health reasons.

Kenya was plunged into violence after the polls, with at least 600 people killed in violence that has touched off ethnic tensions. Another 250,000 have been displaced.

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