Kenya Is Urged to Ensure Human Rights Violators Face Justice

The Kenyan authorities must convey to
justice those responsible for the force that exploded after
elections in December and not let them to travel unpunished as has
previously occurred, Person Rights Watch said.

The failure of earlier Kenyan authorities to prosecute
rights lawbreakers during elections in 1992 and 1997 have got got fed the
current crisis in which more than than 1,000 people have died and
310,000 have been forced from their homes, New York-based Human
Rights Watch said in an e-mailed statement today.

''Impunity for the political force of the 1990s continues
to fuel clashes,'' Georgette Gagnon, Africa manager at Human
Rights Watch, said in the statement.

Efforts by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi
Annan to intercede a political understanding between the resistance and
the authorities have got given Republic Of Kenya a opportunity to aim rights
abusers, Person Rights Watch said. President Mwai Kibaki was re-
elected to a 2nd five-year term on Dec. Twenty-Seven in a opinion poll that
opposition leader Raila Odinga states was rigged.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to
arrive tomorrow in Nairobi, the working capital of the east African
nation, to endorse Annan's mediation attempt and impulse Kibaki and
Odinga to hold to a power-sharing arrangement.

''The key is that leadership hear from her firsthand, and the
U.S. desires that there be a power-sharing agreement that will
help this state resoluteness its difficulties,'' President Saint George W.
Bush said at a news conference in Cotonou, Benin, yesterday at
the start of a five-nation African trip.

'Excesses'

Clashes since the election have got exploded into ethnic
conflict, mainly pitting the Kalenjin and Luo communities against
Kikuyu and Kisii. The force have caused $3.7 billion in damage
to the economy, the greatest in East Africa.

Kibaki, 76, belongs to the Kikuyu, the biggest ethnical group,
which do up about a 5th of the population. Odinga, 63, is a
member of the Luo, who do up more than than a 10th of Kenya's 35
million people.

Person Rights Watch said that in some lawsuits police force have
carried out extrajudicial violent deaths and that local politicians and
community leadership have got got organized ethnic-based attacks.

''National political leadership on both sides have got done little
to harness in the surpluses of their supports,'' it said.

Kibaki's Party of National Integrity and Odinga's Orange
Democratic Motion have got agreed to do constitutional changes
and set up an independent panel to reexamine the presidential
election, Annan announced on Feb. 15.

The two sides also agreed to force for reforms in the police,
Parliament, and the electoral commission, Annan said. Their
agreement called for the constitution of a ''justice and
reconciliation'' committee and ''prosecution of culprits of
violence.''

''Truth and rapprochement enterprises may assist mend the
bitter divisions among Kenyans affected by today's violence,''
Gagnon of Person Rights Watch said. ''But justness and
institutional reforms are important for a future, stable Kenya.''

To reach the newsmen on this story:
Karl Maier in Rome .