Contested Kenya president appoints Cabinet members

Katharine Houreld

NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya’s president named half his Cabinet Tuesday, angering opposition leaders who accuse him of stealing the recent election and undermining mediation attempts for a power-sharing agreement to end violence that has left more than 500 dead.

In the hours after President Mwai Kibaki announced his Cabinet appointments, police fired over the heads of youths who set up a roadblock of burning tires in the western town of Kisumu, according to a resident there. In Nairobi’s oldest slum, Mathare, a witness reported hearing the first gunshots in three days just an hour after the announcement.

Political violence in some areas since the East African nation’s disputed Dec. 27 presidential election had deteriorated into clashes between other tribes and Kibaki’s Kikuyu, which has long dominated Kenyan politics and the economy.

Salim Lone, a spokesman for opposition leader Raila Odinga’s party, repeated the party’s call for no demonstrations, saying it did not want to undermine African Union-mediated talks.

“We think that the announcement of the Cabinet was a slap in the face for all the effort that Kenyans and the international community is making to avoid the crisis,” Lone said.

Earlier Tuesday, Odinga rejected an invitation from Kibaki for talks, calling it “public relations gimmickry” and charging the president with “trying to deflect attention from and undermine” international mediation.

One proposed solution has been for Kibaki and Odinga to share power. But the Cabinet members announced by Kibaki, among them his vice president, included no portfolios for members of Odinga’s party.

Most posts went to members of Kibaki’s party, although Kalonzo Musyoka, a minor presidential candidate who won just 9 percent of votes, was named vice president and another member of Kalonzo’s party was named information minister.

According to a Kenyan government Web site, Kibaki won 4,584,721 votes, or 47 percent of the ballots cast, against Odinga’s 4,352,993, or 44 percent.

However, even the chairman of the country’s electoral commission has said he is not sure Kibaki won. The top American envoy to Africa, Jendayi Frazer, said this week that the vote count at the heart of the dispute was tampered with and both sides could have been involved.

Odinga’s party won 95 out of 210 parliament seats and Kibaki’s party won 43 in legislative elections held the same day as the presidential vote, meaning it will be difficult for Kibaki to govern without making some overture to Odinga.

Martha Karua, reappointed as justice minister Tuesday, said the opposition should take its complaints to the courts.

“I am certain they have no evidence upon which a credible court can nullify a Kibaki win,” she said.

Diplomatic efforts continued. The chairman of the African Union, Ghanaian President John Kufuor, arrived on a mediation mission, and President Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown offered support to the AU effort.

In the U.S., Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama, said the Democratic Party presidential candidate spoke by telephone with Odinga for about five minutes Monday before going into a campaign rally in New Hampshire.

Odinga said on British Broadcasting Corp. radio that Obama’s father was his maternal uncle. He said Obama called twice “to express his concern and to say that he is also going to call President Kibaki so that Kibaki agrees to find a negotiated, satisfactory solution to this problem.”

Kenya is an ally in the United States’ war on terrorist groups and has turned over dozens of people to the U.S. and Ethiopia as suspected terrorists. The country allows American military forces to operate from Kenyan bases and conducts joint exercises with U.S. troops in the region.

The U.S. also is a major donor to Kenya, long seen as a stable democracy in a region that includes war-ravaged Somalia and Sudan. Aid amounts to roughly $1 billion a year, said U.S. Embassy spokesman T.J. Dowling.

Associated Press writers Michelle Faul, Tom Odula and Malkhadir M. Muhumed contributed to this report.

(Associated Press)