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Kenya crisis talks continue
04/03/2008 14:32 - (SA)
Nairobi - Kenya's president and the rival with whom he has agreed to share power after weeks of bitter negotiations held a two-hour meeting on Tuesday about how to move the country past post-election violence that killed more than 1 000 people.
President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga both claimed to have won December 27 presidential elections. Their dispute unleashed weeks of bloodshed, exposing divisions over land and economic inequality.
International and local observers said the vote was rigged and it's unclear who won - and accused politicians of fomenting the violence.
"We agreed that we want to heal the wounds, which were inflicted during these last two months," Odinga told reporters as he left the meeting, which he described as "very productive".
Despite the political deal Kibaki and Odinga struck last week under which Odinga would be prime minister, many feared the fighting - much of it pitting long-time neighbours against each other - would not wane easily.
Historical injustices
On Monday, 13 people were burned alive or hacked to death in what police described as one in a series of clashes over land in the region at the foot of Mount Elgon in Kenya's fertile Rift Valley, some 480km northwest of Nairobi.
Bernard Muli, a police chief in the area, blamed the Sabaot Land Defence Force, a militia group fighting for the redistribution of land in western Kenya.
There was no claim of responsibility, but a member of the SLDF, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said his group was simply trying to "correct historical injustices".
At least 800 people had been killed in land clashes in the region since 2006, said Ken Wafula, executive director of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in the Rift Valley.
The tensions traced back to Kenya's colonial era, after white settlers seized land in the western Rift Valley. The Kikuyus who lived there were dispersed throughout the country, and the British ruled by keeping the groups divided.
At independence in 1963, Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, helped his Kikuyu kinsmen by appointing them to top government posts and easing the way for them to buy land from white settlers.
The Kikuyu quickly prospered, growing into the most powerful ethnic group in the country, running business and politics. The favouritism shown to Kikuyus fuelled a simmering anger among the nation's 41 other tribes.
The old bitterness regularly erupted over land, particularly at election time.
- AP
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