Supporters of Kenyan opposition chief Raila Odinga were on Friday set to defy a ban on a rally in the capital, Nairobi, as international pressure for an end to the political crisis mounted.
The death toll from in post-election violence has already climbed past 350.
The Odinga camp vowed to make an attempt to hold the rally, a day after paramilitary units fired tear gas and water cannons to prevent thousands from gathering in Nairobi’s Uhuru (independence) Park.
President Mwai Kibaki, who Odinga has accused of having rigged the vote, reiterated his openness to dialogue.
But as the government continued to dismiss international offers of mediation, there seemed little sign of a breakthrough in the crisis.
”I’m ready to have dialogue with concerned parties once the nation is calm and the political temperatures are lowered enough for constructive and productive engagement,” Kibaki told reporters on Thursday. He vowed a firm crackdown on violence.
With worsening insecurity, the country’s Attorney General, Amos Wako, called for an independent probe into the December 27 vote results amid diplomatic pressure for Kibaki and Odinga to end violence that has claimed 353 and displaced more than 100 000.
”It is necessary … that a proper tally of the valid certificates returned and confirmed should be undertaken immediately on a priority basis by an agreed and independent person or body,” Wako said.
Wako’s call for an independent inquiry was backed from abroad by the World Council of Churches.
But Wako also stressed that Kibaki’s re-election could only be nullified by the constitutional court.
Odinga, who had planned to declare himself the ”people’s president” at the rally prevented by police in Nairobi on Thursday, denounced the crackdown during a tour of the city mortuary.
”We have seen so many dead kids cut with pangas [machetes], we have seen bodies that have been decimated by fire,” Odinga said at City Mortuary, after European envoys visited city slums to probe claims of police brutality.
Confusion
After the police crackdown, William Ruto, a senior official in Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), said they would make an attempt to gather on Friday.
Ruto said Odinga was also ready to talk but suggested the international community needed to agree first on a mediating team.
At the international level, however, the situation was confused.
While a European Union spokesperson said Brussels and Washington were pushing for a unity government, the United States state department denied that it wanted a coalition administration in Nairobi.
”It’s not quite how the secretary [of state Condoleezza Rice], at least from our side, would characterise the situation,” State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington.
Rice asked her top Africa diplomat, Jendayi Frazer, to travel immediately to Kenya. But it was unclear if Kibaki would meet her.
South Africa’s Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu failed to secure an appointment with Kibaki after he met Odinga, with the government stressing he had not been invited.
Proposed joint mediation by the African Union and Commonwealth also fizzled out.
The Geneva-based World Council of Churches’ Secretary General Samuel Kobia, a Kenyan, said international observers should monitor an independent probe into the election. US-based Freedom House proposed a total recount or a new poll.
Police said 11 Kenyans were killed on Thursday in the fifth day of nationwide unrest with the International Committee for Red Cross saying aid workers have been unable to reach all the affected zones.
Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai has pleaded for talks and peace, while Kenya’s two leading dailies had the same headline Thursday: ”Save Our Beloved Country”. — AFP
