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05 January, 2008
NAIROBI (AFP) - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Saturday said he was willing to form a government of national unity with the opposition during a meeting with US top diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Frazer.
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," the presidential press service said in a statement.
"Frazer commended President Kibaki for reaching out to the opposition in order to stop the violence and called on all parties involved to embrace dialogue as a way out of the current situation," the statement added.
Frazer, US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, said by "extending an olive branch to the opposition, President Kibaki had shown his commitment to ending the political impasse that the country was currently experiencing," it added.
Frazer, who arrived in the country late Friday, earlier met presidential loser Raila Odinga in Nairobi in a bid to defuse the political crisis that has left at least 360 people dead and displaced at least 250,000 others.
Details from the Odinga meeting are yet to be disclosed.
The unprecedented eruption of violence has rocked this once orderly east African country since the poll board declared Kibaki winner of what the Odinga says was a deeply flawed election, thus rejecting its outcome.
Kibaki and Frazer agreed that "all efforts should be made towards ensuring that the politically instigated violence is urgently brought to an end and affected families are assisted to resume normal life."
Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement party on Friday called for a fresh election within three months, but the government shrugged it off, saying Kibaki won in a free and fair poll.
Kibaki's government said the opposition was resorting to "blackmail" by threatening mass protests in the streets of Nairobi, but military police have clamped down on the mainly youthful, slum-dwelling demonstrators.
International observers insist the poll fell short of international standards. The country's attorney general has called for an independent probe.
The US diplomat rushed to Nairobi after days of bloody mayhem threatened to plunge the country, in the heart of Africa's tough Horn region, into anarchy.
The political unrest has revived deeply-rooted tribal vendettas that have blighted the country, mainly during electoral periods.
The West had relied on Kenya, an outpost of stability in the chaotic region, to negotiate peace and install government in southern Sudan and Somalia where western diplomats failed in numerous peacemaking initiatives.
In 2006 Nairobi backed the United States in an Ethiopia-led campaign to oust a radical Islamist movement that had seized control of swathes of Somalia.
Kenya is among Africa's large recipients of US foreign aid, including military aid, which increased from 30 million dollars in 1997 to 390 million dollars in 2006.