Kenyan negotiators resume talks to end crisis

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's feuding parties resume talks on Tuesday after a calls from home and abroad to solve a post-election crisis that has killed 1,000 people and jeopardized the east African nation's reputation.

Foreign powers and the majority of Kenya's 36 million people are impatient for President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga to find a political solution to their country's darkest moment since independence in 1963.

Their dispute over who won the December 27 election unleashed protests and ethnic attacks that have traumatized the population, displaced 300,000 people, and hurt Kenya's reputation as a stable democracy and peacemaker in the region.

"The time for a political settlement was yesterday," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at the end of a lightening trip to Kenya on Monday to push for a power-sharing accord as the best way out of the impasse.

Apart from hardliners on either side, a similar message is reverberating around Kenya from businessmen, clerics, civil society groups and ordinary citizens, who are increasingly angry with the political class.

"Where are the leaders who will put selfish gains aside and accede to the higher commitment to serve and honor a country's craving for peace?" said Daily Nation columnist Mildred Ngesa.

KENYA "TRAUMATISED"

Officials of Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) and Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) have agreed on principles to end violence and help refugees.

They also agree in principle the opposition must be brought into government somehow -- but are stuck on the details of that.

A deadline set by mediator and former U.N. boss Kofi Annan for a mid-February political deal has passed.

But the veteran Ghanaian diplomat has promised not to depart until the mediation has reached an "irreversible point".

He again urged negotiators to hurry up on Monday.

"The people are tired. They've been traumatized. Some live in fear and they want to see this issue resolved," he said.

The negotiating teams have been meeting throughout February, but broke up for a long weekend on Thursday after a trip to a secluded safari lodge failed to bring a breakthrough.

While the government is prepared to give ODM some representation in cabinet, the opposition wants a virtual 50:50 arrangement with a strong position like a new prime minister's post for Odinga. It also wants a new vote within two years.

On the ground, the crisis has produced unprecedented population flows among communities terrified of more violence.

Thousands of members of Kibaki's Kikuyu group, Kenya's largest, have been trooping back to their heartland in the central highlands. Many Luos of Odinga's community, and people from other tribes deemed pro-opposition, have been heading in the opposite direction back to their ancestral homelands too.

(Editing by Giles Elgood)