Police disperse protesters in Kenya
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - January 3, 2008 The attorney general, who was appointed by President Mwai
Kibaki's predecessor, called for an independent body to verify the
vote tally.
Kenya's electoral commission said Kibaki had won the Dec. 27
vote, but rival candidate Raila Odinga alleged the vote was rigged.
The dispute has triggered ethnic violence across the country that
killed 300 people and displaced 100,000 others.
As attempts at mediating the crisis gained momentum, Kibaki said
he was willing to hold talks.
"I am ready to have dialogue with concerned parties once the
nation is calm and the political temperatures are lowered enough
for constructive and productive engagement," Kibaki said, hours
after police halted the planned march by opposition protesters.
South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu flew to Nairobi
and met Odinga. Tutu said afterward that Odinga was ready for "the
possibility of mediation."
Tutu gave no details but said he hoped to meet Kibaki as well.
Government spokesman Alfred Mutua, however, said Kibaki had no
plans yet for such a meeting and that Kenya had no need for
mediators. "We are not in a civil war," he said.
The State Department said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
made three telephone calls Thursday to discuss developments in
Kenya: one to Kibaki, one to European Union foreign policy chief
Javier Solana, and one to the U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger.
An official from Solana's office said he and Rice agreed the EU
and U.S. should press the parties in Kenya to establish a coalition
government and discussed a proposal to send a joint EU-U.S. envoy
to mediate.
But the State Department disputed that characterization of the
conversation, saying that while they had agreed on the need for
political reconciliation between the Kenyan rivals, neither had
specifically endorsed the formation of coalition or a government of
national unity.
"We're not going to be prescriptive here," said State
Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "They do need to come
together, they need to broker some political solution to the
political crisis. They need to find a political solution, what that
political solution is going to be up to them. They are going to
have to define that."
"A government of national unity - the secretary didn't use
those words," he said.
Rice spoke by phone with Kibaki a day after her aides began
trying to arrange the call. She appealed for calm and a peaceful
resolution to the allegations of electoral fraud, McCormack said.
Rice gave a similar message to Odinga on Wednesday and told both
men that Ranneberger would follow up with them.
The dispute has degenerated into violence nationwide pitting
Kibaki's influential Kikuyus against Odinga's Luos and other
tribes, and has shaken Kenya's image as an tourist-friendly oasis
of stability in a region that includes war-ravaged Somalia and
Sudan.
Smoke from burning tires and debris rose from barricaded
streets, not just around Nairobi's huge slums where hundreds of
thousands of Odinga's supporters live, but on main roads leading
into suburbs that are home to upper class Kenyans and expatriates.
In the Mathare slum, rival groups of men hurled rocks at each
other. Black smoke billowed from a burning gas station, and several
charred cars sat on roads. The corpse of at least one man lay face
down on a muddy path, and a wailing wife pulled her battered
husband from the dark waters of the Nairobi River, where he had
been dumped and left for dead.
Kenya Television Network showed a church consumed by fire in the
Kibera slum. Police pushed back a crowd of several hundred people
from Kibera holding branches and white flags symbolizing peace.
Some burned an effigy of Kibaki and waved placards denouncing him
as the devil.
"Without Raila, there will be no peace," said protester Edward
Muli, 22.
Hundreds of young men marched in the coastal resort of Mombasa
but were quickly repulsed by security forces. Police shot one
protester in the head and he was taken to a hospital, said witness
Moses Baya.
After Nairobi police used tear gas and water cannons to break up
crowds trying to march to a planned demonstration in the capital, a
top official with Odinga's main opposition party said the protest
rally had been canceled and he urged supporters to go home.
"We are a peaceful people who do not want violence," William
Ruto, a top party official told hundreds of supporters through a
megaphone on a street. "That is why we are peacefully dispersing
now."
Odinga postponed the rally until Friday.
He toured Nairobi's City Mortuary, which was full of piles of
bodies of babies, children, young men and women. Some were burned,
while others had head wounds. Many did not have visible wounds. It
was unclear when they had died, but opposition officials said some
were killed Thursday.
"What we have just seen defies description," Odinga said after
the visit. "We can only describe it as genocide on a grand
scale."
Foreign observers have questioned the vote count, as has the
chief of Kenya's electoral commission.
"Because of the perception that the presidential results were
rigged, it is necessary ... that a proper tally of the valid
certificates returned and confirmed should be undertaken
immediately" by an independent body, Attorney General Amos Wako
said in a statement that was read on television.
Wako did not elaborate or say whether an independent body would
include foreign observers, and it was unclear whether he had
Kibaki's backing or had made the statement independently.
Wako was appointed to the lifetime post by former President
Daniel arap Moi. While he has been seen as close to Kibaki, the
decision to launch an independent election probe was a surprise and
could reflect the seriousness of the rigging allegations.
However, the government has a long history of appointing
independent commissions to investigate wrongdoing, only to have
them take years and end with reports that are never released and
have no practical effects.
Mutua told The Associated Press he had "no problem" with
Wako's call. But Odinga's spokesman, Salim Lone, rejected it,
saying his party had "no faith in any government institution."
Kenya's main newspapers ran front-page headlines urging people
to "save our beloved country."
Ranneberger, speaking on Kenyan Television News, said the
violence "has got to stop." Kibaki "needs to speak out and
Odinga needs to speak out and bring this thing to an end."
Sir Edward Clay, former British High Commissioner to Kenya, said
Tutu's presence would help.
"I think that Kenyans, including the Kenyan government, are
concerned about what outsiders think of them. I think that the
presence of Desmond Tutu is a presence that they will respect," he
said on BBC World Service television.
Neighboring Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni's office said he
had spoken to the two rivals, also trying to end the unrest. But
Museveni had also congratulated Kibaki on his re-election.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission urged Kibaki to agree to an
independent review of the disputed ballot count, saying in a
statement: "Kenya will not survive this moment unless our leaders
act like statesmen."
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Associated Press writers Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Khaled Kazziha,
Tom Maliti, Malkhadir M. Muhumed, Tom Odula and Todd Pitman
contributed to this report.