By DPA
Osnabrueck (Germany) : Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga has said he agrees in principle to a proposal by President Mwai Kibaki for a national unity government in the wake of the controversial presidential elections.
Odinga’s party has rejected as fraud electoral authorities’ declaration that Kibaki in the presidential election had defeated Odinga whose Orange Democratic Movement won most of the seats in simultaneous parliamentary polls.
Countrywide post-poll violence triggered by the controversial election had taken more than 300 lives.
“We are offering a transitional government between Kibaki’s and my party,” Odinga told German daily Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung in an interview published Monday, adding that this coalition would prepare the way for another presidential election within three months.
The statement reversed his earlier rejection of Kibaki’s proposal made Saturday. Odinga had said there could be no direct talks with the president, who, he charged, had won the Dec 27 election through “illegal” means.
But Odinga shot down calls for a new vote count.
“The documents have been tampered with,” the opposition leader told the newspaper. “To evaluate them again would make no sense.”
International election observers also said they found numerous inconsistencies in the vote counting and pronounced doubts about the official results.
Odinga said in the interview with the newspaper that negotiations with Kibaki must take place with an international mediator. He proposed former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, Ghanaian President and African Union Chairman John Kufuor, or former Sierra Leone president Tejan Kabbah.
In the meantime, international mediation seeking an end to the crisis continued over the weekend as radio and television stations Sunday night broadcast Christian, Muslim and Hindu leaders in Kenya praying for peace and unity. US envoy Jendayi Frazer met both Kibaki and Odinga.