African Union plans Kenya mediation

By Kwasi Kpodo

ACCRA (Reuters) - Ghanaian president and African Union chairman John Kufuor prepared a mediation mission to Kenya on Wednesday to help end ethnic killing, and Nobel peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu flew in to offer his help.

Amid a growing clamour for calm, the United States and former colonial ruler Britain called for restraint and dialogue as the death toll from days of violence topped 300, fuelling fears of more instability in Kenya and East Africa as a whole.

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga accuses President Mwai Kibaki of rigging his re-election. The disputed outcome has sparked ethnic killings in a country often seen as a bulwark of stability in a volatile part of Africa.

Presidency aides in Ghana said Kufuor spent much of the day in meetings on the subject, considering whether to send a delegation to the east African country to mediate or go himself.

But British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who appealed on Tuesday to Kufuor and former Sierra Leonean President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the head of the Commonwealth's electoral observer mission, to intervene in Kenya, said Kufuor would go in person.

"I have just talked to President Kufuor of Ghana ... I welcome his decision, that he will announce later today, that he will go to Kenya. He will meet President Kibaki and Mr Odinga tomorrow," Brown said in a statement.

"He will call on them to urge their supporters to end violence and he will work with the parties to ensure that reconciliation is brought about and perhaps a chance that some of the people who are at the moment opponents may join a government of national unity."

TUTU IN TOWN