NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya’s opposition leader signaled Sunday that he is willing to share power with the government he accuses of rigging elections, but at the same time he called for mass rallies — a move that threatens renewed bloodletting.
Weary Kenyans, some hungry and homeless after a week of violence marked by ethnic clashes, prayed for peace and begged their leaders to break the political deadlock.
“This fighting is meaningless,” Eliakim Omondi, 17, said at a Lutheran church in Nairobi’s Kibera slum that was torched last week. “I wish they would just talk and square everything so the fighting will stop.”
Pastor Dennis Meeker urged congregants kneeling before a charred cross to “be with those who tried to kill you and destroy you.”
A woman dropped to the floor screaming, “Forgive the people who attacked our church!”
Opposition leader Raila Odin ga, who claims incumbent President Mwai Kibaki stole the vote, told reporters he was ready to talk about sharing power but only through a mediator empowered to negotiate an agreement that the international community would guarantee.
He welcomed the imminent arrival of Ghana’s President John Kufuor, current chairman of the African Union, who is expected in Nairobi by Tuesday.
Jendayi Frazer, the leading U.S. diplomat on Africa, was in Nairobi talking to Kibaki and Odinga, whom the United States, Britain and the European Union have urged to negotiate.
The East African nation is considered an ally in the fight against terrorism, and the recent violence has damaged its image as a stable democracy and attraction for millions of tourists in a region rent by wars, uprisings and civil unrest.
More than 300 people have died and 250,000 have been forced from their homes in the upheaval over the ballot, only the second free election since Kenya’s 1963 independence from Britain.
The troubles eased over the weekend, although there have been isolated machete fights and ethnic attacks.
But more clashes are likely if Odinga presses ahead with his call for supporters to rally Tuesday in defiance of a government ban.
“If there is any bloodshed during these rallies, it will be the government’s responsibility,” Odinga told reporters.
Kibaki, re-elected by a narrow margin in a vote count that international observers say was deeply flawed, said Saturday after meeting with Frazer that he was willing to form a unity government.
Odinga rejected that, but his spokesman, Salim Lone, said they were open to other solutions.
“There are other formulations, such as a coalition government with genuine power sharing, that we are willing to discuss,” he said.
