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Kenyan negotiators to hold talks
31/01/2008 08:20 - (SA)
Bogonko Bosire
Nairobi - Negotiators seeking to resolve Kenya's political crisis were set to hold their first meeting on Thursday, amid mounting ethnic violence sparked by last month's disputed presidential election.
With the toll from the violence nearing 1 000 and nearly 300 000 people displaced, negotiators representing President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga were set to sit down together, according to the United Nations.
Former UN chief Kofi Annan on Tuesday launched crisis talks between Kibaki and Odinga, who charged that Kibaki stole the December 27 election with a rigged vote count.
Three representatives of each side met separately on Wednesday ahead of the joint meeting on Thursday.
Govt insists on dialogue
Annan said on Tuesday that he hoped the immediate political issues could be resolved within four weeks and gave Kenya one year to resolve damage inflicted by the month of chaos.
Odinga had refused to recognise the legitimacy of Kibaki's presidency and his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) had pressed for an electoral re-run, but the government had instead insisted on dialogue.
The violence in Kenya had involved acts of "ethnic cleansing," the United States' top Africa envoy said on Wednesday.
"There was ethnic cleansing in Kenya. I listened to the victims," US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer said on the sidelines of preparatory meetings for an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.
Ethnic violence
Frazer, who visited Kenya after the violence broke out, said entire communities had been forced to pack up and leave their homes.
"If they resisted they were killed. That sounds like ethnic cleansing to me," she said. Protests against Kibaki's re-election quickly descended into ethnic violence amid longstanding tribal and economic tensions.
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 had since carried out numerous revenge attacks.
Frazer's remarks came as Kenyan police were given on Wednesday shoot-to-kill orders in a bid to stem weeks of unrest, the second time they had been given such authority since Kibaki was proclaimed the winner of the election on December 30.
But Odinga called for them to be cancelled immediately.
"The shoot to kill order is illegal, no matter what the crime," he told supporters in the opposition stronghold Kibera slum in Nairobi, calling it "a sign of a government that has run amok".
A police commander said the orders would cover looters, arsonists and anyone "barricading roads".
- AFP
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