Opposition lawmaker killed in Kenya

NAIROBI, Kenya – Gunmen killed an opposition lawmaker in Nairobi and government helicopters fired on crowds in the Rift Valley on Tuesday, the latest flare-up of the ethnic fighting that has gripped Kenya since its disputed presidential election.\nUnder increasing pressure to share power, President Mwai Kibaki and the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, formally opened negotiations, but the two remained far apart on the vote outcome – an issue each indicates is not negotiable.\nOdinga insisted what needed “the most urgent attention” was the resolution of the flawed election results. Kibaki deplored the fact that some Kenyans “have been incited to hate one another and view each other as enemies.”\nFormer U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is helping mediate the dispute and Tuesday’s meeting.\n“The people need you,” he said “They want you to take charge of the situation and do whatever possible to prevent the downward slide into chaos that is threatening this country.”\nMugabe Were, who was shot to death as he drove home, was among a slew of opposition members who won seats in the legislative vote held at the same time as the presidential election. The opposition, which won the most seats in parliament, accuses Kibaki of stealing the presidential vote.\nAfter Were’s death, groups of armed youths began gathering in two Nairobi slums. Sabat Abdullah, a slum resident, said a gang hefting machetes dragged a doctor from the president’s Kikuyu tribe from his clinic “and then cut and cut until his head was off.”\nSimilar scenes have convulsed western Kenya, where police in helicopters fired on crowds on Tuesday. Since the Dec. 27 election, the death toll across a country once among the most stable in Africa has soared to over 800. Much of the violence has pitted other tribes against the Kikuyu, long resented for their dominance of Kenyan politics and business.\nU.S. Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful whose father was Kenyan, appealed for peace on Nairobi’s Capital FM radio station.\n“Now is the time for all parties to renounce violence. Now is the time for Kenyan leaders to rise above party affiliations and past ambitions for the sake of peace,” Obama said. “Most troubling are new indications that the violence is being organized, planned and coordinated.”\nIn Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the ongoing violence underscored the importance of negotiations.\n“This is a political dispute and it requires a political solution,” Casey said. “The two leaders have to come to some agreement on how that is done.”\nPolice said Were’s death was being treated “as a murder but we are not ruling out anything, including political motives.”\nThe Rift Valley has seen some of the worst of the postelection violence. At least 90 people were killed there over the weekend.\nKibaki and Odinga blame each other for the violence, which has driven 255,000 people from their homes. The two men have traded accusations of “ethnic cleansing.” Human rights groups and officials charge the violence has become organized.