Negotiators for Kenya's political rivals met for the first time yesterday, as Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki attended an African Union summit in neighboring Ethiopia set to be dominated by the month-long crisis sparked by his reelection.
With the toll from the post-poll violence nearing 1,000 and close to 300,000 people displaced, representatives of Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga met for the first time together in Nairobi with former UN chief Kofi Annan.
The current UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, urged the feuding leaders to find a peaceful way out of their country's violent crisis in an opening address to the summit in Addis Ababa.
PHOTO: AFP
"Kenyan leader President Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga ... have a special responsibility to solve the crisis peacefully," Ban told African heads of state.
Among them was Kibaki, who attended the meeting despite efforts by Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) to get the 53-state body to exclude him.
The ODM warned that Kibaki's presence in the ranks of the heads of state would amount to a recognition of his election, despite local and international concerns over flaws in the vote count of the Dec. 27 polls.
An opposition lawmaker was shot and killed by a police officer in the Rift Valley yesterday, the second opposition lawmaker to be killed this week in Kenya.
National police chief Hussein Ali said lawmaker David Too was killed in "a crime of passion" by a traffic police officer who had been arrested. The opposition said it was an assassination plot.
Thousands of people from Too's Kalenjin ethnic group blocked roads with rocks and set houses ablaze on the outskirts of the western town of Kericho, near Too's constituency. Members of other tribes fled to a police station for safety.
In Eldoret, where Too was killed, angry residents marched on the police station. They fled when paramilitary officers fired into the air, and as the crowd ran, people began shuttering their businesses.
Within minutes of the news reaching another western town, the opposition stronghold of Kisumu, gangs of men armed themselves with machetes and set up burning barricades. Businesses shut down and workers began to flee from the town center.
Henry Kosgey, an ODM official, said at a news conference that witnesses said David Too was shot by a police officer as he was traveling from Nairobi to Eldoret by car.
But police said Too's death was not linked to the political turmoil. Eldoret deputy police chief Gabriel Kuya said the traffic officer discovered that his girlfriend was having an affair with Too, and when he saw them both in the car, chased them on his motorcycle.
``He drove toward the side of the woman and shot her in the stomach twice. Her partner [legislator Too] pleaded with the officer not to kill her but he turned his pistol on him instead, hitting him four times in the head,'' Kuya said.
A mob of Kikuyus attacked a Kalenjin official as he attempted to collect the body of a relative who had been killed, a correspondent said.
They accused him of having sponsored ethnic attacks near Molo late on Wednesday.
Police from his entourage shot in the air to disperse the crowd and the official sheltered in a nearby hospital for several hours before fleeing without the body, he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS