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Kenyan leader 'ready for unity'

Kenya's president is ready to form "a government of national unity" to help resolve disputed elections that caused deadly riots, a government statement said yesterday without explaining what such a power-sharing arrangement might involve.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki made the statement to Jendayi Frazer, the leading US diplomatic for Africa, according to the director of the presidential news service, Isaiya Kabira. Kabira said he could not say whether that was a formal offer to opposition leader Raila Odinga.

Frazer, who met with Odinga earlier yesterday, would be meeting again with Odinga, Kabira said, implying she might be carrying a message from Kibaki.

Frazer kicked off her mediation effort yesterday. Some 250,000 people have been displaced and at least 360 killed in violence following the Dec. 27 election.

A UN statement released on Friday said an estimated 250,000 Kenyans had been displaced by the unrest that broke out when the electoral board declared Kibaki the winner last Sunday.

The announcement was made despite growing evidence of fraud and sparked a wave of riots and tribal killings, mainly in Odinga's western heartlands.

The world body said between 400,000 and 500,000 people had been affected by the violence and that at least 100,000 of them needed immediate assistance in the western Rift Valley region.

As the country grappled with an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, the violence subsided nationwide, with few incidents reported overnight and police announcing that the daytime curfew on the city of Kisumu had been lifted.

"The curfew was lifted after the security situation improved," a police official said.

More than 100 people have been killed in tribal violence in Kisumu, the country's third city and a bastion of Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).

UN chief Ban Ki-moon held separate phone conversations with Odinga and Kibaki, his spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

"In both conversations, he discussed the return to calm and normalcy in Kenya and humanitarian needs [and] called upon the political leaders to resolve their issues through dialogue," she said.

On Thursday and Friday, police thwarted planned rallies by the opposition that were aimed at protesting the results and declaring Odinga "the people's president."

Yet the government and the opposition still disagreed on the way forward, with ODM demanding a revote within three months and Kibaki's camp rejecting the request as blackmail.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called on Kenya to let the head of the African Union (AU), Ghanaian President John Kufuor, play a mediating role in the crisis, after Kufuor's trip was canceled.

Before Frazer's arrival the government had given the cold shoulder to proposed mediators, initially saying Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu was welcome in Kenya as a "tourist" only and nipping in the bud a joint mediation by the AU and Commonwealth.

Tutu was later allowed to meet Kibaki and emerged optimistic after talks on Friday.

Kibaki had been praised during the campaign for preserving Kenya's status as a war-free country and grooming its economy to become an "African tiger" but calls were growing for a probe into the ballot.
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