NAIROBI (AFP) — Kenya's ruling party signed an agreement with a small opposition party on Friday to form a coalition government, amid a political crisis that has shaken the east African economic giant.
President Mwai Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) has joined with the opposition Orange Democratic Movement-Kenya (ODM-K), whose candidate finished a distant third in December 27 presidential polls, in a unity government.
"The first historic coalition agreement between competing political parties has been signed," ODM-K secretary general Mutula Kilonzo told reporters.
The biggest opposition party in Kenya's parliament, Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), is locked in a tense stand-off with the government over alleged rigging at the presidential elections.
It has rejected a call to join the government of national unity.
Kilonzo said the PNU and ODM-K would work together in parliament, which is due to re-open next Tuesday.
ODM-K party leader Kalonzo Musyoka, who has been sworn in as vice president, and another party member, Samuel Pogisio, appointed information minister, defended his decision to work with Kibaki.
"I am here to tell you today that our principles and goals are closer to being realised that any other time in our party's history," Musyoka told reporters.
Odinga's ODM party on Friday called for nationwide mass demonstrations next week after international mediators failed to broker an agreement between the two feuding sides, but police have banned the demonstrations.
Nationwide rioting sparked by the December 30 announcement of Kibaki's victory over Odinga in the elections quickly degenerated into bloody tribal vendettas, killing at least 600 people and displacing nearly 260,000 others.
The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) more than 500,000 people in Kenya will need humanitarian assistance in the coming weeks and months.
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