Outside threats to end Kenya crisis won't work-formin
17 Feb 2008 09:45:26 GMT Source: Reuters
(adds Bush) NAIROBI, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Kenya's foreign minister urged outsiders on Sunday not to make the mistake of using threats to force a deal to end a post-election crisis, saying the solution lies with Kenyans. "We encourage our friends to support us and not to make any mistake of putting a gun to anybody's head and saying 'either' 'or' because that cannot work," Moses Wetangula told reporters. "Even if we get visitors to help us in any way possible, the answer to the problem in Kenya lies with Kenyans themselves," he said a day before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due in Nairobi to support negotiations led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan. Rice is being sent U.S. President George W. Bush who said on Sunday he did not want to dictate how to bring an end to Kenya's political violence, but to help push along Annan's mediation. President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election triggered a wave of ethnically-tinged violence that has killed 1,000 people and left 300,000 homeless. The crisis affecting a key ally in the West's fight to counter al Qaeda has dented Kenya's democratic credentials, driven tourists away and disrupted vital supplies of food and fuel to regional countries. Bush, who started a five-nation tour of Africa on Saturday, has thrown his weight behind a power-sharing deal to end the political standoff in Kenya. Rice is expected to meet Kibaki, his opposition rival Raila Odinga, and Annan. (Reporting by Joseph Sudah; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
A woman from the Kikuyu tribe, displaced during post-election violence, walks at a police station in Bahati, on the outskirts of Nakuru, west of Nairobi, February 15, 2008. Kenya's feuding parties ...
