Kenya's leaders tell displaced they can go home soon

ELDORET, Kenya (AP) -- Kenya's president and prime minister have begun a tour of the areas hardest-hit by the country's deadly post-election violence, telling thousands of displaced that they will be able to go home soon.

President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga have visited Thursday a vast displacement camp in this western Kenya town, where some 16,000 people remain since the December 27 presidential election.

"We do not want you people to continue living here and suffering," Kibaki has told the cheering crowd. "We will solve this problem very soon."

Odinga has added: "We are here as leaders ... We can solve all the problems in order for peace to exist."

More than 1,000 people were killed and 300,000 displaced following the disputed December elections that both Odinga and Kibaki claimed to have won.

On April 17, Kenya swore in the new Cabinet of more than 90 people, which one Kenyan official described as "a big burden on a poverty-stricken country."

After a power-sharing compromise, opposition leader Odinga was sworn in as prime minister, the first person to hold that office since Jomo Kenyatta held it briefly after independence in 1963. Kibaki remained president.

The Cabinet is split 50-50 between former bitter enemies from opposing parties. E-mail to a friend

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