Kenya talks set to resume but violence continues
By Tim Cocks
NAIROBI, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan will try to push Kenya's rival sides to resolve the political crisis on Monday after a weekend of clashes cast a pall over a framework deal meant to stop weeks of post-election bloodshed.
Annan mediated an agreement between the parties on Friday to take steps to end violence that has killed around 900 people, plus a commitment to resolve the crisis within 15 days.
But his efforts were undermined by harsh words traded between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga on Friday and fresh clashes between groups of youths claiming allegiance to one side or the other.
Kibaki says he fairly won a Dec. 27 election that returned him to power; Odinga says he stole it.
In Kenya's volatile and ethnically mixed western region, gangs fired arrows and threw rocks at each other in front of police who were unable or unwilling to intervene on Sunday.
A quarter of a million people have so far been displaced by the fighting and hundreds of homes have been burned.
In an indication of gangs being organised, a white pickup delivered food and milk to youths in Chebilat before they used tyres, petrol and straw to torch a medical centre.
The opposition called on Sunday for the African Union to deploy peacekeepers in Kenya to contain the violence, saying local security forces could not be trusted to be non-partisan.
Despite Annan's efforts, Kibaki and Odinga remain at loggerheads, their bitter feud still raging over who won a vote observers said was too badly run for anyone to know.
If Annan achieves a compromise between them, it is not clear how quickly that will quell ethnic tensions, which have spiralled in a country long seen as east Africa's most stable.
What started as a political dispute has uncorked decades-old divisions between tribal groups over land, wealth and power, dating from British colonial rule and stoked by Kenyan politicians for personal gain during 44 years of independence.
