By DPA,
Nairobi : Kenya’s new Prime Minister Raila Odinga has appealed to African countries to act with speed in their efforts to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe, reports said Sunday.
The Daily Nation newspaper quoted Odinga as saying that the “age of dictators was long gone” and that Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe should not interfere with the release of election results which have been withheld for three weeks.
“I sympathise with the people of Zimbabwe and I will play a key role in letting him unite his people. African heads of state should use force if necessary to remove people like Mugabe from power, especially those who do not want to respect the people’s decision through the ballot,” he said.
Odinga was speaking at a dinner to celebrate his appointment as prime minister.
He said that democracy in Kenya had been made possible by the citizen’s resistance of bad governance.
After Kenya’s flawed elections in December, Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement led a campaign of protests against President Mwai Kibaki who was charged with stealing the vote.
When violence sparked by the polls spiralled, the African Union stepped in with a mediation team which brokered a peace deal that created a coalition government with Odinga as premier.