NAIROBI, Jan 2: Kenya’s political leaders traded charges of inciting ethnic violence on Wednesday as diplomatic efforts intensified to end post-election unrest that has left some 330 people dead.

A dispute over last week’s presidential ballot, focused on discrepancies in the counting process, has triggered Kenya’s worst urban clashes in 25 years and displaced tens of thousands of people in the process.

The head of the African Union, Ghanaian President John Kufuor, was expected in Nairobi later on Wednesday to lead a joint mediation effort with the head of the Commonwealth observer mission in Kenya, former Sierra Leonean president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah.

President Mwai Kibaki’s narrow re-election victory and his swearing in on Sunday sparked violence across the country — much of it along tribal lines, with tit-for-tat killings and targeted arson attacks.

Kibaki belongs to Kenya’s largest tribe, the Kikuyu, and his defeated opposition challenger, Raila Odinga, to the second largest, the Luo.

Kibaki’s land minister, Kivutha Kibwana, accused Odinga of orchestrating “well organised acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing” — a charge the secretary general of Odinga’s party, Anyang Nyong’o, threw back at the government.

“How can we be responsible when people are angry because Kibaki stole the vote?” Nyong’o said. “It is genocide because police are killing people.” Odinga plans to hold a mass rally on Thursday declaring himself the “people’s president,” despite police warnings that he would face arrest.

The worrying echoes of previous ethnic conflicts in the region were highlighted by the Kenyan press.

“If no urgent step is taken to arrest the killings, Kenya is bound to sink into the abyss and join the ranks of war-torn countries like Cote d’Ivoire, Somalia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone and others which have experienced genocide on an unimaginable scale,” an editorial in the Daily Nation warned on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, at least 35 children and adults sheltering in a church near the western town of Eldoret were burnt alive by an angry mob in one of the worst incidents since the Dec 27 election.

At least 22 people were killed later in overnight clashes — a far lower toll than the two previous nights. The overall death toll since election day stood at 328, according to medical workers, police officials and mortuary attendants across the country.

In a statement issued in London on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined British Foreign Secretary David Miliband in pressing for a resolution.

“We call on all political leaders to engage in a spirit of compromise that puts the democratic interests of Kenya first,” the joint statement said.

Odinga’s charges of electoral fraud were lent extra weight when the chairman of Kenya’s electoral commission, Samuel Kivuitu, acknowledged the election result may have been inaccurate.

“I do not know whether Kibaki won the election,” Kivuitu told The Standard, one of Kenya’s leading dailies.

Kibaki has publicly called for consultations with party leaders, but Odinga has insisted he will only negotiate if the president acknowledges he cheated.

Britain, the former colonial ruler, welcomed Kufuor’s mission to mediate between the two men.

“He will call on them to urge their supporters to end violence and he will work with the parties to ensure reconciliation is brought about and perhaps (there is) a chance that some of the people who are at the moment opponents may join a government of national unity,” Brown said.—AFP