Bush calls for power sharing
2008-02-16 16:38
Cotonou - US President George W Bush
began a visit to Africa on Saturday with a call for a power
sharing agreement in Kenya to end the post-election conflict
there that has killed 1 000 people.
Bush, whose five-nation trip does not include Kenya, is
sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Nairobi on Monday
to back mediation efforts between Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki
and his opponents by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan.
US officials stressed that Rice's trip was intended to
back, not upstage, Annan's efforts in Kenya. But they warned the
United States was ready to sanction any individuals who sought
to obstruct the peace moves in the East African state.
"Kenya's an issue ... that's why I'm sending Secretary Rice
there to help with the Kofi Annan initiative," Bush told
reporters after arriving in Benin on the first stop of his
six-day tour.
Rice's mission was "all aimed at having a clear message that
there be no violence and that there ought to be a power sharing
agreement," Bush said after holding talks with Benin President
Thomas Boni Yayi in a brief stopover at Cotonou airport.
He later left for Tanzania, the next stop on a tour that
will also take him to Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia.
Former UN Secretary-General Annan is trying to end turmoil
in Kenya over the disputed December 27 election that has also
uprooted 300 000 people, plunging East Africa's biggest economy
into its most turbulent episode since independence in 1963.
Annan's role
The top US diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, stressed
that Rice's trip to Kenya would back Annan's role.
"Right now, we don't want to supplant Kofi Annan's
mediation," she said, briefing reporters aboard Air Force One en
route to Tanzania. "President Bush does not need to go to Kenya
at this point," Frazer added.
She said she believed that Kenyan President Kibaki and
opposition leader Raila Odinga had both understood they had to
find a credible lasting solution to the dispute.
"Any individuals ... seen as obstructing the effort for a
peace process, a power sharing agreement, the president stated,
will be subject to possible further sanctions by the U.S.," said
Frazer, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.
Bush, who was accompanied by his wife Laura, is avoiding
Africa's conflict hotspots and visiting five states carefully
chosen to show a different face from the poverty-plagued and
war-stricken continent normally portrayed by the world's media.