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01 January, 2008
NAIROBI (AFP) - EU monitors cast doubts Tuesday on the results of Kenya's disputed presidential vote, stepping up the pressure on re-elected President Mwai Kibaki as his country reels from violence that has claimed nearly 260 lives.
A second consecutive night of tribal conflict and clashes between police and protestors left more than 70 dead, with no end in sight to the post-election unrest that has plunged one of Africa's more stable democracies into an unprecedented crisis.
World leaders called on Kenya's rival leaders to open a dialogue, but Raila Odinga, the opposition candidate narrowly defeated in the December 27 poll by Kibaki, said he would only talk when the president owned up to vote-rigging allegations.
"The conditions under which we are prepared to negotiate is that Kibaki must first accept that he did not win the elections," Odinga said in an interview with the BBC.
His charges of fraud were lent extra weight by the EU election monitoring team which issued a report Tuesday saying the vote had "fallen short" of international standards and called for an independent audit into the results.
The polls were "marred by a lack of transparency in the processing and tallying of presidential results, which raises concerns about the accuracy of the final results," the report said.
"We believe it is vital that an impartial investigation into the accuracy of the presidential results is conducted," chief EU observer Alexander Graf Lambsdorff told reporters.
Britain, the former colonial power, joined international calls for calm, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown speaking by telephone to both Kabika and Odinga.
"What I want to see is them coming together, I want to see talks and I want to see reconciliation and unity," Brown said.
While noting the widespread allegations of vote-rigging, Brown argued that "the first priority" was ending the violence.
"It is unacceptable that lives are being lost," he said.
Clashes were reported by police and witnesses overnight in most Nairobi slums as well as in several of Odinga's strongholds in western Kenya.
The city of Kisumu, northwest of Nairobi, appeared to be the worst affected, with a mortuary attendant telling AFP that 48 bodies were brought in overnight.
"Forty-four had fresh bullet wounds, four were hacked with machetes," he said. Police described seven other burnt bodies brought to the mortuary as looters.
The violence is the worst Kenya has witnessed since a failed 1982 coup.
Slum areas were overrun by rioters burning down shops belonging to members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe and looting anything from refrigerators to basic goods, which have started running out since the crisis brought East Africa's largest economy to a standstill.
According to a tally compiled by AFP, 259 people have died in politically related violence since the December 27 elections.
The 76-year-old Kibaki, who was sworn in less than an hour after the electoral commission declared him the winner on Sunday, has vowed to clamp down on the unrest.
"We have put enough police officers in the specific areas where the incidences of violence have occurred to ensure everyone is secure," he said in a New Year message appealing for "national healing" and reconciliation.
Odinga, 62, has rejected Kibaki's victory as a civilian coup and urged his supporters to turn out for an alternative swearing-in ceremony at a rally in Nairobi on Thursday.
The government has banned the event and threatened Odinga with arrest if it goes ahead.
Foreign governments, meanwhile, have warned their nationals to avoid non-essential travel to Kenya.
Washington had initially congratulated Kibaki on his re-election but the US State Department on Monday withdrew its endorsement.
"I'm not offering congratulations to anybody," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.
The latest violence has rattled a country generally considered as a beacon of democracy and stability in the region, with the threat of lasting tribal tit-for-tat killings now looming and the regime's legitimacy in doubt.
"One tribe is targeting another one in a fashion that can rightly be described as ethnic cleansing," said one senior police official on condition of anonymity.