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Kenyan rivals agree plan to end
turmoil: Annan
02.02.2008
NAIROBI (AFP) - The parties of Kenya's feuding leaders agreed a
joint roadmap Friday to end unrest that has claimed nearly 1,000
lives since last month's disputed presidential elections, former
UN chief Kofi Annan said.
"The Kenyan dialogue and reconciliation has started, we are off to
a good start," Annan said after the two sides produced their first
joint agreement since the December 27 elections set off a month of
bloodletting.
"We have agreed an agenda covering both short-term issues and also
long-term issues," Annan told reporters after talks with
representatives of President Mwai Kibaki and his rival, opposition
leader Raila Odinga.
"We are going to push as hard as we can to get results."
The agreement came as 10 people, including a policeman, were
killed in fresh clashes in western Kenya and dozens of houses were
burned.
Annan, who has been in Kenya for more than a week, said the first
priority of the four-point agenda was "immediate action to stop
the violence and restore fundamental rights and liberties."
Both sides would then address the growing humanitarian crisis
caused by the unrest and resolve the political crisis created
after Odinga accused Kibaki of having rigged the election rob him
of the presidency in the widely-contested polls.
Annan gave a deadline of seven to 15 days from the start of the
dialogue on January 28 to resolve the first three points.
But the document gave little detail of how the political crisis
would be addressed, saying only that "its resolution may require
adjustments to the current constitutional, legal and institutional
frameworks."
The fourth point concerned long-term issues such as unemployment,
poverty and land reforms.
The current UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, added his weight to
diplomatic efforts on a visit to Nairobi Friday and called for an
end to the cycle of violence.
"The killing must stop. The violence must end for the sake of the
Kenyan people and for the sake of Kenya," Ban told a news
conference.
Some 1,000 people have died and up to 300,000 have been displaced
in fighting sparked by Kibaki's re-election.
The crisis has severely shaken the formerly stable east African
nation that is a refuge for many people displaced by neighbouring
conflicts.
"You have lost already too much in terms of national image, in
terms of economic interests," Ban said. "What I'd like to ask you,
is to look beyond these individual interests, look beyond the
party lines."
The UN chief met with Kibaki on the sidelines of an African Union
summit in Ethiopia on Thursday and with Odinga in Nairobi on
Friday.
Kibaki told African leaders in Ethiopia Friday that his poll
victory represented "the will" of the Kenyan majority and blamed
the opposition for the unrest.
"Regrettably, although the election results reflected the will of
the majority of Kenyans, the leaders in the opposition instigated
a campaign of civil unrest that resulted in over 800 deaths,"
Kibaki told a meeting of the east African Inter-Governmental
Authority on Development (IGAD).
Kibaki returned to Kenya on Friday evening.
US embassy spokesman Thomas Dowling said in Nairobi that the FBI
had offered to probe the killings this week of two opposition MPs,
Melitus Mugabe Were and David Kimutai Too.
But the government rejected the offer.
"We are capable of conducting our own murder investigations," said
government spokesman Alfred Mutua.
Too was shot dead by a policeman on Thursday. On Friday, a police
commander said that a crowd in his home village bent on revenge
and armed with bows and arrows, spears, clubs and machetes, had
attacked and killed a policeman.
Fighting in Nyamira district further west killed eight people and
wounded 12, a police commander told AFP. "They were either hacked
to death or shot with poisoned arrows," he said.
Odinga said earlier the killings of the MPs were "part of a plot"
to reduce his Orange Democratic Movement's (ODM) majority in
parliament.
The ODM secured 99 seats in the legislative elections that
coincided with the presidential poll on December 27. That made it
the largest single party but it remained short of an overall
majority. Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) won 43 seats.
Members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe suffered heavily in the first
wave of violence at the hands of Odinga's Luo tribe and other
ethnic groups, but have since carried out numerous revenge attacks.
The World Health Organisation warned Friday that hundreds of
thousands of displaced Kenyans lacked proper health care and faced
a growing risk of disease and sexual violence.
Annan said the talks would resume Monday morning.
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