Rivals give ground as Kenyan death toll nears 500

Kenya’s president and his chief rival made key concessions to end the dispute over the country’s elections, calling off protests and agreeing to talks under pressure from the US as the death toll from a week of violence reached nearly 500.

Meanwhile the top American envoy to Africa said the vote count at the heart of the dispute was tampered with and both sides could have been involved.

The December 27 election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power for another five-year term, with his rabble-rousing opponent, Raila Odinga, coming in second after his early lead evaporated overnight.

“Yes, there was rigging,” the US envoy, Jendayi Frazer, said yesterday in Nairobi, where she has been meeting Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga for the past three days.

“I mean there were problems with the vote counting process. Both the parties could have rigged.”

She said she did not want to blame either Mr Kibaki or Mr Odinga.

Kenya’s electoral commission chairman Samuel Kivuiti has said he is not sure Mr Kibaki won, though the chairman officially declared Mr Kibaki the winner in the closest presidential election in Kenya’s history.

The US intervention appears to be having an effect on the crisis, with both sides softening their tones since Ms Frazer’s arrival.

Kenya is crucial to the US’ war on terrorism, having turned over dozens of people to the US and Ethiopia as suspected terrorists, allowing American forces to operate from Kenyan bases and conducts joint exercises with US troops in the region.

The US also is a major donor to Kenya, long seen as a stable democracy in a region that includes war-ravaged Somalia and Sudan.

Ms Frazer said the violence “hasn’t shaken our confidence in Kenya as a regional hub”.

The violence has marked some of the darkest times since Kenya’s independence from Britain in 1963, with much of the fighting degenerating into riots pitting other tribes against Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu, long dominant in politics and the economy.

An official in neighbouring Uganda said 30 fleeing Kenyans were thrown into the border river by Kenyan attackers and were presumed drowned.

Two Ugandan truck drivers carrying the group said they were stopped at a roadblock mounted by vigilantes who identified the refugees as Kikuyus and threw them into the deep, swift-flowing Kipkaren River, said Himbaza Hashaka, a Ugandan border official. The drivers said none survived, Mr Hashaka said.

A statement yesterday from the Ministry of Special Programmes put the death toll at 486 with some 255,000 people displaced from their homes. The toll, which did not include the drownings at the border, was compiled by a special committee of humanitarian services set up by the government which extensively toured areas most affected by riots.

The body of Olympian Lucas Sang was found in western Kenya on New Year’s Eve with a deep gash to the back of his head and severe burns, said close friend Moses Tanui, a former world 10,000-meter champion. Mr Sang, who was in his 50s, was a 400-meter runner who made the quarter finals of the men’s race in 1988 and the same year ran in the finals as a member of the 4x400m relay. Mr Sang was a member of the Kalenjin tribe that has clashed with Kikuyu.

Mr Kibaki invited Mr Odinga to his official residence for a meeting on Friday to discuss how to end the political and ethnic turmoil, according to a statement from the president’s press service. Just hours earlier, Mr Odinga called off nationwide rallies amid fears they would spark new bloodshed.

Mr Odinga’s spokesman, Salim Lone, said Odinga would meet Mr Kibaki, as long as the meeting was part of the mediation process with African Union chairman John Kufuor, the Ghanaian president.

Mr Kufuor’s trip to Kenya had been delayed repeatedly as the government rejected outside mediation in the disputed vote, but he will begin talks in the capital as early as tomorrow.

Ms Frazer had won an offer from Mr Kibaki to form a unity government over the weekend. Mr Odinga then said he was willing to drop demands that Mr Kibaki resign and was willing to discuss sharing power, but only through a mediator empowered to negotiate an agreement that the international community would guarantee.

It would be nearly impossible for Mr Kibaki to govern without opposition support. In parliamentary elections held the same day as the presidential vote, Odinga’s party won 95 of 210 legislative seats, and half of Mr Kibaki’s Cabinet lost their seats.

It was a sign of people’s anger over pervasive corruption and nepotism that favoured Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe.