Kenya in Crisis Day 48:...And There's the Rub

Talks continued on Monday in hopes of reaching a power sharing agreement between the ruling party headed by Mwai Kibaki and the opposition headed by Raila Odingo.

A Kenyan government negotiator said Monday the president's party was considering sharing power with the opposition, the first acknowledgment from the government side that such a proposal was on the table.

The international community has been pressing for a power-sharing agreement in hopes that it will end the presidential election-related violence that has killed more than 1,000 in the East African country. Up to 600,000 people have been displaced, a top U.N. official said Monday.

"The talks from today on will be a hardball," said Mutula Kilonzo, one of the negotiators on behalf of President Mwai Kibaki, as discussions resumed between the government and the opposition.

Over the weekend, however, Odinga was a lot more confrontational.

Kibaki "must step down or there must be a re-election — in this I will not be compromised,"

Odinga shouted in East Africa's common language of Swahili to cheering supporters.

It was a sharp turnaround from comments he made in English two days earlier in the capital, Nairobi. He indicated he would not insist on Kibaki's resignation, saying "we are willing to give and take."

And there's the rub of course, because it is impossible for there to be a power sharing agreement if one of the two parties expects the other to re sign. I have been skeptical that this power sharing agreement would ever materialize and even more skeptical that it would have any effect What is currently happeing simultaneously with one set of folks claiming that an agreement is near and one of the two parties demanding the other re sign only re inforce my suspicions.

I don't believe that there is anyone close to the situation that is making any sort of a legitimate effort to do anything to bring the chaos under control. I think that most of the sides are going through the motions or angling for more power. Meanwhile gangs of men armed with machetes are seeking out folks, usually those from other tribes, and executing them.

As the country decsends into chaos most of those in charge see their own hold on power as more important than stopping a genocide.