VOA常速英语2008年-UN Chief Seeks Way Out of Kenya's Post-Election

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon touched down in Kenya on Friday for talks with Kenya's opposition 1 leader in a bid to keep the country's post-election chaos 2 from descending 3 into a wider ethnic 4 war.   At least four more people were killed by police during ongoing 5 protests.  Nick Wadhams has the story from Nairobi.

Kenya was tense a day after a second opposition lawmaker was slain 6 within the space of three days. In the western city of Kisumu, which has seen some of the worst violence since Kenya's Dec. 27 vote, police fired on people protesting the death of lawmaker David Too.  Fresh protests also broke out in the Rift 7 Valley town of Eldoret, an opposition stronghold.

Speaking to reporters in Nairobi, Mr. Ban said he was "reasonably encouraged" that Kenyan leaders have the will to solve the crisis, which has killed at least 850 people and displaced more than 250,000. He said the violence has done serious damage to Kenya's economy and its image.

"All international community, the whole world is watching you, the future is on your shoulders," he said.  "I am deeply concerned about this situation, and the number of deaths is just intolerable and unacceptable in this modern world. This must stop, this is up to the Kenyan people. You must act according to all established practices in the modern world."

With President Mwai Kibaki in Addis Ababa for an African Union summit, negotiators from the government and opposition met for the second day to try and break the political deadlock 8. Opposition leader Raila Odinga has insisted on a new vote to determine the winner of Kenya's presidency 9, but Mr. Kibaki refuses to negotiate on his victory.  He says Mr. Odinga should take his complaint to court.

Mr. Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement, ODM, insists the December 27 vote was flawed, and many international observers have reported irregularities in the vote count. There have been fears that the violence, initially 10 characterized as an outburst of rage over the conduct of the election, has now devolved into tribal 11 attacks and possibly even ethnic cleansing 12.

Tensions in Kenya have heightened in recent days with the killings 14 of two lawmakers from Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement.

After his meeting with Mr. Ban, Mr. Odinga insisted that the government accept a U.S. offer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation 15 to help conduct an inquiry 16 into the slaying 17 of Mugabe Were, an ODM lawmaker slain on Tuesday. Mr. Odinga has described Were's killing 13 as a political assassination 18.

"We are demanding that the government should take up this offer if they really want people to believe that they want to get to the root cause of this matter," he said.  "The police are themselves complicit, police are compromised, they are part of the problem. They cannot be relied upon to carry out an investigation. We want an independent agency to be allowed to carry out this investigation."

Mr. Odinga has also accused the government of playing a role in the slaying of the second lawmaker, David Too. Police have described Too's slaying by a police officer in Eldoret as a crime of passion. Too was killed along with a woman who was the girlfriend of the policeman who gunned them down.