US withdraws congratulations

2007-12-31 19:08

Washington - The US State Department expressed "serious concerns" on Monday about Kenya's disputed presidential vote and withdrew its congratulations to the re-elected leader, Mwai Kibaki.

"We do have serious concerns, as I know others do, about irregularities in the vote count, and we think it's important that those concerns... be resolved through constitutional and legal means," department spokesperson Tom Casey said.

"I'm not offering congratulations to anybody, because we have serious concerns about the vote count," he added after another State Department spokesperson on Sunday had congratulated Kibaki.

"We call on the political parties in Kenya as well as the Kenyan people to avoid violence," Casey also said, urging dialogue between party leaders.

At least 149 people have been killed in clashes since Thursday's election in Kenya, which led to widespread allegations of vote rigging and fraud in the official tally before Kibaki was hastily sworn in for a second term on Sunday.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga had planned to present himself as "The People's President" at a mass rally on Monday, but postponed the gathering until Thursday and predicted that one million supporters would show up.

Odinga, 62, had led nearly every pre-election opinion poll and looked to be heading for victory before Kibaki, 76, squeezed out a victory in late vote-counting.

US not happy

Despite foreign concern about the vote, expressed notably by European Union monitors, State Department spokesperson Rob McInturff on Sunday had congratulated Kibaki and called on all sides in Kenya to accept the results.

Rowing back, Casey told reporters on Monday that any sense that the United States was happy with the election was an "error".

"What's clear to us is that there are some real problems here and that those need to be resolved in the Kenyan system, in accordance with their constitution, in accordance with their legal system," he said.

Casey's comments came after a statement issued by the US embassy in Nairobi fretted about "anomalies" in the vote, noting that some Kenyan constituencies had declared bizarrely high turnout figures.

The statement deplored the violence that has erupted in Kenya and called on Kibaki and Odinga to "reach out to each other in order to work out a way forward for the nation".

The unrest is the worst Kenya has seen in its cities since a failed 1982 coup against authoritarian former president Daniel arap Moi.

- AFP