Kenyan Rivals Agree on Measures to End Post-Election Violence

NAIROBI, Feb. 1 -- Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga agreed Friday on a plan to end weeks of post-election violence that has brought this East African country to the edge of disaster.

With international pressure mounting, the death toll rising and the economy in various stages of collapse, the two leaders signed an agenda that includes a pledge to resolve the underlying political crisis within 15 days.

Former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan has been mediating between the two sides to end fighting that has killed more than 800 people and displaced 300,000 since the disputed Dec. 27 presidential election. At least nine people were killed Friday.

Meanwhile, U.N. humanitarian officials expressed alarm over the rising number of sexual assaults in the hundreds of informal camps for displaced people that now dot the Kenyan countryside.

"Whatever the motivation, the perpetrators are exploiting the conflict in order to commit sexual violence with impunity," said Elizabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The agreement signed Friday calls for the disarming of militias accused of ethnically based attacks in western Kenya and the opening of roads that have been blocked by demonstrators. It also requires the government to investigate charges that the police used excessive force.

Odinga's spokesman, Salim Lone, called the deal "a real breakthrough."

"It showed two sides with a vast difference between their position coming together to agree on something that is not central, but things that are very important," he said.

But the political impasse between the two leaders remains.

Odinga has accused Kibaki of rigging the election, a charge bolstered by international observers who have said the tally was so flawed it is impossible to know who won. Odinga has proposed a recount or an interim power-sharing agreement until a new election can be held in one or two years.

Kibaki has rejected any proposal that implies he is not the duly elected president, and he reiterated Friday that the dispute should be handled in court. Odinga has rejected that idea, saying the courts are stacked with Kibaki loyalists.

According to one source close to the talks, Kibaki's government is beginning to feel pressure from the United Nations, the United States, France and countries in the region whose economies are suffering because of Kenya's troubles. In Uganda, for instance, gas now costs $15 a gallon because supply routes through Kenya have been disrupted.

"Absolutely the government is feeling the pressure," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. "The government feels very isolated. The economy is in a free fall."

Mediation is to resume Monday, when the two sides will discuss humanitarian issues. Talks on the most difficult political issues will begin Wednesday.

The violence continued in western Kenya, much of it retaliation for the killing of lawmaker David Kimutai Too on Thursday. Opposition protesters blocked roads in Odinga's stronghold of Kisumu, and police shot and killed a protester.

In Too's home town, a mob of 3,000 men armed with bows and arrows and machetes killed a police officer, the Associated Press reported Friday. Six people were hacked to death and two were killed with poisoned arrows in a nearby village, the AP said.

Across the Rift Valley, apparently well-organized militias have been burning houses and villages to drive out people from Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe. More recently, Kikuyu gangs have begun taking revenge in two western towns, Naivasha and Nakuru, hunting down people from Odinga's Luo tribe, torching houses and hacking or stoning people to death.

As a result, Kenya is increasingly segregated along tribal lines, with Luos and members of other tribes that supported Odinga heading back to their ancestral homeland in western Kenya and Kikuyus moving east toward their homeland in the country's lush, green central region.