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Africa
Kenyan opposition wants fresh vote
Odinga shifts stand two days after saying he will not demand president's resignation.
Last Modified: 10 Feb 2008 08:22 GMT
UN envoy Holmes visited refugee camps on Saturday to assess the situation [AFP]

Kenya's opposition leader is demanding that the country's incumbent president resign and new elections be held.
 
Raila Odinga dropped his conciliatory stance on Saturday, putting to doubt whether talks with Mwai Kibaki, the president, can end the violence that has followed December’s disputed elections.
Kibaki "must step down or there must be a re-election - in this I will not be compromised,'' Odinga shouted in front of his supporters in his traditional power base of western Kenya.
Odinga, leader of the Orange Democratic Movement, spoke in East Africa's common language of Swahili at the funeral of an opposition politician killed in the violence.
 
Only two days previously, Odinga said in the capital Nairobi that he would not insist on Kibaki's resignation, asserting "we are willing to give and take".
 
UN envoy
 
Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general who is mediating talks between the government and opposition, said on Friday that a power-sharing agreement was being drawn up.
 
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He said he hoped to complete work on a settlement eary this week.
 
A UN envoy visited a refugee camp in Kenya, where people have fled the violent fallout from the political turmoil.
 
John Holmes, the UN undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, is on a three-day visit to assess the situation in the region.
 
More than a thousand people have been killed following the December 27 election, and 300,000 have fled to refugee camps.
 
The violence has invoked ethnic clashes and decimated the country’s economy.
 
Foreign observers say that the elections were rigged.
Source:
Agencies
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