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289 dead as EU calls Kenya poll flawed
EU monitors cast doubts Tuesday on the results of Kenyas disputed presidential vote, stepping up the pressure on re-elected President Mwai Kibaki as his country reels from violence that has claimed nearly 290 lives.A second consecutive night of tribal conflict and clashes between police and protestors left more than 100 dead, with no end in sight to the post-election unrest that has plunged one of Africas more stable democracies into an unprecedented crisis. World leaders called on Kenyas rival leaders to open a dialogue, but Raila Odinga, the opposition candidate narrowly defeated in the December 27 poll by Kibaki, said he would only talk when the president owned up to vote-rigging allegations. The conditions under which we are prepared to negotiate is that Kibaki must first accept that he did not win the elections, Odinga said in an interview with the BBC. His charges of fraud were lent extra weight by the EU election monitoring team which issued a report Tuesday saying the vote had fallen short of international standards and called for an independent audit into the results. The polls were marred by a lack of transparency in the processing and tallying of presidential results, which raises concerns about the accuracy of the final results, the report said. We believe it is vital that an impartial investigation into the accuracy of the presidential results is conducted, chief EU observer Alexander Graf Lambsdorff told reporters. Posted by: Fred 2008-01-02 |
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