The trouble even spilled into the garden of the Serena Hotel, one of the fanciest in town. Guests in safari vests looked down from the balconies of their $400-a-night rooms and watched the turmoil below. Police officers in padded suits charged a scrum of demonstrators and shot their rifles in the air. As soon as the tear gas wafted up, the tourists ducked inside. “This country is going to burn!” a protester yelled. It has been a week since Kenyans went to the polls in the most contested elections in the country’s history, and the dispute over whether Mwai Kibaki, the president, honestly won the most votes continues to violently divide the nation. The government and opposition leaders continue to blame each other for the bloodshed, trading accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing. They have set such strict conditions on negotiating that nothing, including the entreaties of Western ambassadors, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the cries of their own people, has succeeded in getting them to talk to each other.
Kenya’s two biggest newspapers printed the identical banner headline on Thursday: “Save Our Beloved Country.” But a breakthrough may be in the works. Kenya’s attorney general, Amos Wako, said on Thursday afternoon that an independent body should investigate the disputed vote tabulations, which gave the president, at the eleventh hour of the counting process, a razor-thin margin of victory. Western officials and opposition leaders had been calling for such a probe. It is not clear if Mr. Kibaki will agree to this. A few hours after the attorney general spoke, the president reiterated at a news conference that he had won the elections fair and square and would not relinquish power. “I will personally lead this nation in healing,” he said. Alfred Mutua, the government’s top spokesman, said the attorney general was merely making a suggestion and that an independent investigation into election irregularities “was not necessarily going to happen.” “The president prefers the court system,” Mr. Mutua said, meaning the opposition could file a complaint in court, which most people here think is futile. But, he added, “the president has nothing to hide.”
Foreign diplomats have been meeting day and night to find a way to bring Mr. Kibaki and Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader who says he was cheated out of the presidency, to some sort of détente. Until last week, Kenya was one of the most promising countries on the continent, but the ethnic violence, fueled by political passions, is threatening to ruin that. The economy, one of the biggest in Africa, has ground to a halt. Roads are blocked. Shops are closed. Factories are idle. The currency, the Kenyan shilling, is taking a dive. The World Bank said on Thursday that the unrest threatens Kenya’s impressive recent gains in economic growth and poverty reduction, citing business leaders’ estimates that the country is losing some $30 million a day. And the ills here are hurting the entire region. Gas stations in Rwanda are now rationing fuel because their supply from Kenya has been cut. In Uganda, Sudan and Congo, displaced people are running low on food because United nations relief trucks cannot get past vigilante checkpoints. Production in places like Tanzania is slowing down because materials that come from Kenya have not arrived. “Kenya is the dynamo of this whole region,” said Harvey Rouse, a diplomat for the European Union.
Mr. Rouse spoke from a hill overlooking an enormous slum where police were battling protesters. The slum, named Kibera, has become the protesters’ stage. Every morning, the journalists take their spots on the hillside, the police line up at the mouth of a road leading from the shanties to the glass towers downtown and the protesters mass in the streets, screaming slogans, lighting fires and burning pictures of the president. On Thursday it was an effigy stuffed with greasy rags. Thursday was supposed to be the day that Mr. Odinga’s supporters rallied in downtown Nairobi at a place called Uhuru Park. But they never got close. Thousands of riot police fanned out at dawn and sealed off the main routes into the city. They refused to let any demonstrator pass. Some were clearly peaceful, like the hundreds of women carrying palm leaves and walking barefoot to town. They were chased away choking on tear gas and clawing at their eyes. Others’ intentions were so clear. One young protester crouched in the street with a green leaf, the sign of peace, in one hand and a rock in the other. “We have been patient long enough!” he yelled. It is indeed difficult to tell which way things are going here. In the past two days, there have been no big attacks, like the one on Tuesday in which up to 50 people hiding in a church were burned alive. But reports from the provinces indicate the killings are still going on. Much of the violence is ethnically based, with tribes that support the opposition, like the Luos, Masai and Kalenjin, hunting down Kikuyus, the tribe of the president. On Wednesday night, residents of a quiet town in the Rift Valley said that a mob of Masai killed four Kikuyu shopkeepers and looted their stores. The opposition says it will hold a rally on Friday and every day after that until the president steps down.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
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