Annan prepares to try to mediate in Kenya crisis

By Tim Cocks

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan was due to arrive in Kenya on Tuesday to try to mediate in a post-poll crisis that has torn the country in two and triggered weeks of violence that killed at least 650 people.

A hotly disputed election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power last month amid cries from opposition leader Raila Odinga that he rigged it. Electoral observers complained of "serious irregularities" in the tallying process.

Odinga's supporters took to the streets but the government hastily outlawed their protests. Some sliced up members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe with machetes, killed them with arrows or burned their homes. Police shot dead scores of demonstrators.

In the latest violence, rivals from Kibaki's Kikuyu and Odinga's Luo ethnic groups attacked and mutilated victims of the other tribe in Nairobi on Sunday, killing at least three, while police said a further four died in violence in the Rift Valley.

The violence has displaced 250,000 people. The government and opposition accuse each other of genocide. Both still refuse to hold talks, despite pressure from Western powers like the United States, Britain and the European Union.

The 69-year-old African statesman will face this situation when he arrives in Nairobi late on Tuesday to try to broker a deal between the two sides that eluded African Union head and Ghanaian President John Kufuor earlier this month.

"DIALOGUE"

The opposition has refused to talk to the government except with international mediation, but some hardliners in Kibaki's cabinet are openly hostile to Annan's offer of mediation.