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Kenya crisis talks to continue
29/02/2008 10:55 - (SA)
Nairobi - Kenya's rival camps were on Friday to resume crisis talks a day after President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga signed a power-sharing deal to end a bloody two-month political crisis.
Former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, who brokered the deal after weeks of tough negotiations, would now lead talks on long-term issues including land, constitutional and government reforms, and economic disparities among Kenyan communities.
The deal created the post of prime minister and two deputy prime ministers in a bid to break the political deadlock created by contested presidential elections that triggered unrest across the country, killing more than 1 500 people and displacing hundreds of thousands.
Kibaki had said the new posts would be created under the constitution pending a comprehensive constitutional review in 12 months' time, which had been delayed since 2003 after Kibaki came to power.
Political power
It would be the second time the country had a prime minister post, after it was scrapped in 1964 by founding president Jomo Kenyatta, a year after the country's independence from Britain.
The main issue dividing the two sides in the talks appeared to be the amount of power the prime minister would be granted.
Odinga said the new government, which he thought would be up and running by around the middle of March, would look to make significant constitutional, electoral and land reforms within its first year.
Kenyan newspapers warned that dividing up political power was only a small first step and that other underlying issues needed to be resolved to prevent a slip back to violence.
"The formation of a coalition government is the minimum requirement for the more difficult work to follow," the Daily Nation warned in an editorial.
"The next agenda item on the negotiations ... includes comprehensive constitutional review, focusing very much on sensitive issues such as devolution, land reforms, ethnic relations and the establishment of a just and equitable society."
Power-sharing deal
Most of those issues "we have not preferred to address since independence in the hope that they would resolve themselves", it added.
The Standard newspaper pressed parliamentarians, who were due to resume parliamentary sessions on March 06, to move swiftly to make amendments that would entrench the power-sharing deal in the constitution.
"Implementing the agreement and implementing some of the other challenges facing the country will not be easy. Neither will healing the wounds caused by the divisive campaign, the election and its aftermath," an editorial read.
Washington, London and the United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon welcomed the deal and called for its swift implementation to save the country from fresh political agony.
The crisis had tapped into simmering resentment over land, poverty and the dominance of the Kikuyu, Kibaki's tribe, in Kenyan politics and business since independence in 1963.
- AFP
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