By Andrew Cawthorne and C. Bryson Hull
KENYA'S feuding political parties have made progress and may reach a breakthrough within days on their major sticking point over a disputed December 27 election, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last night.
"I sincerely hope that we will conclude our work on item three, the settlement of the political issues, by early next week," he said.
"We are all agreed a political settlement is necessary with a little patience and a bit of luck," he added, witho
ut giving details on the progress made.
Riots and ethnic attacks have killed more than 1,000 people and uprooted 300,000 since the December 27 polls, shattering Kenya's image as a stable business, tourism and transport hub.
Negotiators for President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga have already agreed on principles to stem violence and help refugees, but had been stuck this week on the crucial dispute over the tallying of the December ballot.
Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) says Kibaki supporters rigged the vote, but Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) says the opposition cheated in its heartland and points to the election board's announcement Kibaki had won.
Annan has given both sides until mid-February to resolve that issue and then move on to tackle deeper underlying problems like land and wealth inequality within a year.
He dismissed speculation in local media that the parties had reached an agreement on sharing power in a government of national unity.
Officials on both sides of the political divide declined to give details of the progress in negotiations, but said talks were moving forward.
Mutula Kilonzo, a member of the government's negotiating team, agreed the talks could not afford to fail.
"We cannot afford our people using bows and arrows, people being pulled out of buses to be asked 'which language do you speak?' and then being chopped," he said.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, John Holmes, flew in yesterday to assess the situation.
The full article contains 338 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
