Kenyan negotiators resume talks to end crisis

By Andrew Cawthorne

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's feuding parties resume talks on Tuesday after a calls from home and abroad to solve a post-election crisis that has killed 1,000 people and jeopardised the east African nation's reputation.

Foreign powers and the majority of Kenya's 36 million people are impatient for President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga to find a political solution to their country's darkest moment since independence in 1963.

Their dispute over who won the December 27 election unleashed protests and ethnic attacks that have traumatised the population, displaced 300,000 people, and hurt Kenya's reputation as a stable democracy and peacemaker in the region.

"The time for a political settlement was yesterday," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at the end of a lightening trip to Kenya on Monday to push for a power-sharing accord as the best way out of the impasse.

Apart from hardliners on either side, a similar message is reverberating around Kenya from businessmen, clerics, civil society groups and ordinary citizens, who are increasingly angry with the political class.

"Where are the leaders who will put selfish gains aside and accede to the higher commitment to serve and honour a country's craving for peace?" said Daily Nation columnist Mildred Ngesa.

KENYA "TRAUMATISED"

Officials of Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) and Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) have agreed on principles to end violence and help refugees.