KENYA:Kenya's opposition suspended talks with President Mwai Kibaki's party yesterday and police fired teargas to scatter opposition supporters protesting at deepening deadlock over a powersharing cabinet.
Mr Kibaki and rival Raila Odinga delayed naming the new cabinet on Monday after disagreeing over how to share out ministries and traded blame over who was responsible. The cabinet is central to a deal on ending Kenya's post-election crisis.
Anyang N'yongo, secretary-general of Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), said talks would be suspended until Mr Kibaki's party "fully recognises the 50/50 powersharing arrangement and the principle of portfolio balance".
As he spoke, Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slum was convulsed by the biggest protests since both sides signed a power-sharing deal in February to end turmoil that killed at least 1,200 people after Mr Kibaki's disputed re-election in December.
Residents said youths looted shops and burned tyres. Some ripped up railway lines connecting the Kenyan port of Mombasa, the region's largest, with Uganda.
Protests spread to the western opposition stronghold of Kisumu, where police closed in on angry crowds.
Mr N'yongo said the opposition was demanding a partial cabinet already named by Mr Kibaki be dissolved before any more talks took place. He said the opposition would no longer respect an earlier agreement to a 40-member cabinet and wanted it to have 34 posts.
Most of the recent disagreement centres on a handful of ministries that Mr Odinga, the prime minister-designate, says Mr Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) had promised to give up.
PNU denies that, and Mr Kibaki said on Monday he was ready to conclude the process of forming the cabinet as soon as possible.
- (Reuters)