Odinga denies 'ethnic cleansing'

Protests in the Kibera slum of the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Wednesday
Inter-tribal violence has sparked claims of ethnic cleansing
Kenya's opposition leader has denied his supporters have engaged in ethnic cleansing, blaming government forces for targeting certain communities.

Raila Odinga was responding to accusations by Justice Minister Martha Karua that his group had planned to carry out systematic ethnic cleansing.

Mr Odinga told the BBC his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) had done all it could to prevent such violence.

He was speaking on the first of three days of protests over a disputed poll.

Police fired live rounds and tear gas in clashes with opposition party supporters who were defying a protest ban.

Clashes broke out Nairobi, Mombasa and in western Kenya, where three people were killed.

'Mayhem'

President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the 27 December poll, but the results were rejected by the opposition and called into question by international observers.

More than 600 people have died in unrest since, and another quarter of a million have been driven from their homes.


Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga
What we have been seeing is basically a response by members of the public to the police action
Raila Odinga
Opposition leader

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In an interview last week with the BBC's HARDtalk programme, Ms Karua said the government had suspected that Mr Odinga's ODM party was "planning mayhem if they lost".

But she said they had not expected "the magnitude [of the violence] and for it to be ethnic cleansing".

Asked whether she was accusing the ODM leadership of "calculatedly planned ethnic cleansing", she answered: "Absolutely yes, that's what I'm saying categorically."

In his interview on Wednesday, also with the BBC's HARDtalk, Mr Odinga called these allegations "outrageous".

"She knows where the truth lies - that all that we are having is as a result of the order that the government has given to the police: to shoot particularly members of certain ethnic communities.

"So what we have been seeing is basically a response by members of the public to the police action, which has resulted in the killing of very many people who are members of other communities than the one that she comes from," Mr Odinga said.