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US: Kibaki, Raila should share power
2008-02-19 10:20:01
By Correspondent Kasembeli Albert, Nairobi
International pressure on Kenya`s warring groups to resolve the country`s worst political crisis scaled up to a new level yesterday with the arrival in Nairobi of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Without mincing words Dr Rice asked Kenya`s President Mwai Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga to speedily agree to a power-sharing arrangement under a grand coalition to restore the country`s stability.
The top US diplomat said last year`s general election results did not reflect the will of Kenyans and that the two should in the meantime bury their differences, share power and let the flawed polls be addressed in a different fora.
Dr Rice, who arrived in the country in the morning to deliver a message from President George Bush said: “There is a need for power-sharing arrangement that will allow a grand coalition.”
Speaking after meeting chief mediator Kofi Annan in Nairobi, she said the US wanted to deal with a “stable, legitimate Kenyan government that enjoyed the confidence of Kenyans.”
The US’s, Dr Rice said, was a strong message that people of Kenya expected President Kibaki and Odinga to move fast to resolve the crisis in the country.
“Kenyans expect their leaders to overcome their differences and agree on a system of government for stable and prosperous Kenya,” she said at Serena Hotel in Nairobi.
President Kibaki, the envoy said, should take the “last step” and agree on governance, as Kenyans “want to move forward.”
Kenyans, she said, want the government to return to the “business of governance.”
She said President Bush spoke to Annan on Sunday night and assured him of US support for the ongoing negotiations to find a way out of the political crisis in the country.
The former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan is leading the talks to mediate between President Kibaki’s Party of National Unity and Odinga’s Orange Democratic Party.
Other members of his panel of Eminent Persons are former Tanzania President Benjamin Mkapa and former South African first lady Graca Machel.
Dr Rice who said she had also held discussions with European countries colleagues, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and African Union chairman Jakaya Kikwete and that they fully supported the Annan talks.
“They are fully supported by the international community,” she said.
She said last year’s polls were difficult for Kenyans and that the elections did not produce the outcome “needed by Kenyans.”
Dr Rice was emphatic and added America’s clout to what is increasingly becoming the common position of the international community that the mediation talks chaired by Annan must produce a workable settlement to the crisis.
Dr Rice flew to Nairobi from Dar-es-Salaam where she arrived on Sunday as part of US President George Bush’s entourage.
President Bush, who is on a six-day tour of Africa, is expected to discuss the Kenyan crisis with Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete - who is the new chairman of the African Union.
After nearly two months of political turmoil caused by the disputed outcome of presidential poll, Kenyans have pinned their hopes on the Annan-led talks as the only means by which the country can reclaim its standing as a democratic and prosperous nation. More than 1,000 people have been killed and 350,000 others displaced from their homes.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga accuses President Kibaki of rigging the December 27 vote, but Kibaki insists he won fairly.
Over the past six weeks, top international personalities, including UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon and African Union chairman John Kufuor, have flown into Nairobi to push for an end to the crisis that is estimated to have wiped out more than KSh100 billion or a quarter of the national budget in January alone.
The outbreak of post-election violence has been particularly damaging to tourism - a key foreign exchange earner that roped in more than Sh65 billion last year.
Kenya`s economy as well as those of its landlocked neighbours has also taken a hit from the paralysis of the transport system and the subsequent pile up of goods at the port of Mombasa.
The paralysis has seen the cost of consumer goods such as petroleum more than double in a span of three weeks in western Kenya and more than triple in neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda.
Government and opposition negotiators adjourned talks last Thursday after the talks reached a critical point of agreeing on a power-sharing deal - a sticking point that is becoming the international community’s prescription as a solution to the crisis.
Disagreement over the power-sharing deal was last week being seen as the reason the negotiation team failed to keep to the time frame Dr Annan had earlier set.
At a briefing of the media last Friday, Annan said both sides had agreed to conduct independent investigations into the disputed election and that the outcome of the probe would guide the country’s pursuit of electoral reforms.
He also gave the clearest hint of what is on the cards when he said it was essential for parties to the conflict to form a “broad coalition” that will spearhead the making of the necessary constitutional and electoral reforms.
Pressure has been mounting for the negotiating team to go beyond the disputed election and tackle long-simmering and sensitive issues such as constitutional reform, land distribution and inequality of access to national resources by the various regions and social classes.
Annan had set mid-February as the deadline by which a political agreement should have been reached and a year to tackle the underlying problems.
``In Kenya we`re backing the efforts of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to end the crisis,`` President Bush said in a speech on Africa.
``And when we`re on the continent I’ve asked Rice to travel to Kenya to support the work of the former secretary general and to deliver a message directly to Kenya`s leaders and people: there must be an immediate halt to violence, there must be justice for the victims of abuse and there must be a full return to democracy,`` he said before leaving Washington for the African tour.
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