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.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS