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Kenyan President Offers To Form Unity Government

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By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY, The Associated Press

Published: January 6, 2008

NAIROBI, Kenya - President Mwai Kibaki told the top U.S. diplomat for Africa he was willing to share power and the opposition backed off demands for his resignation Saturday, offering hope for an end to Kenya's deadly electoral crisis.

As Kibaki and Raila Odinga faced growing pressure to compromise, the violence that has killed more than 300 people across the country appeared to ease. The violence erupted after a disputed vote gave the president a second term and awakened dormant ethnic rivalries.

The crisis after the Dec. 27 election with a deeply flawed vote count has pitted Kibaki's Kikuyu people against Kenya's other tribes, and brought chaos to a country that had been one of east Africa's most stable democracies.

In the countryside, with the continued threat of ethnic attacks, thousands fled their homes, escorted by soldiers as they streamed down roads strewn with corpses, burned vehicles and downed power lines.

Desperate Kenyans urged Kibaki and Odinga to compromise.

"Sit down, find a way out," said Christopher Kingua as he fled his home near Eldoret in the western highlands, where bodies were spilling out of packed morgues. "Our homes, our people, our property has been destroyed."

After meeting with Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Kibaki said he was "ready to form a government of national unity that would not only unite Kenyans, but would also help in the healing and reconciliation process," according to the director of the presidential news service, Isaiya Kabira.

Odinga, whose early lead over Kibaki evaporated as the tallies rolled in last week, met separately with Frazer. He later said he had not received any formal offer, and demanded an international mediator help settle the dispute.

"Let them put that on the table when we are negotiating," Odinga said of Kibaki's proposal to form a unity government.

He also repeated his demand for a new election.

After a second meeting with Frazer, however, Odinga unexpectedly withdrew his call for Kibaki to step down.

It would be nearly impossible for Kibaki to govern without opposition support. In parliamentary balloting, Odinga's party won 95 of 210 legislative seats and half of Kibaki's Cabinet lost their seats.

Thousands in and around Nairobi's slums - home to a third of the capital's population - lined up for food after days of riots left them cut off. Kaltuma Musa, 12, who was among hundreds of children thronging a volunteer handing out crackers, said she came because she heard there was food.

Musa popped one cracker in her mouth and put another in her pocket.

"I'll take this one home," Musa said. "It's for my mother."

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