Kenya to hold peace conference to repair image

Announcing the plans on Thursday, 8 January 2009, Prime Minister Raila Odinga said the forum, which would be held in the first week of February, would bring together more than 2,000 participants, including local and international experts.

The conference, whose theme is One Kenya, One Dream: The Kenya We Want, would be held at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in Nairobi from 2 to 4 February. It is expected to be addressed by present and past world leaders as well as local and foreign experts, scholars and entrepreneurs.

The Prime Minister also unveiled the conference's website at a brief ceremony attended by Planning Minister Wycliffe Oparanya, Public Service Minister Dalmas Otieno and their ministries' permanent secretaries, Dr Mohammed Isahakia and Edward Sambili respectively.

Among the foreign participants expected to address the conference are former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Bin Mohammed, former Senegal President Dr Abdoulaye Wade, former Mozambique President Joachim Chissano and former South African First Lady Graca Machel.

Others are Cyril Ramaphosa, a respected business executive, Dr Salim Salim, former Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi the former Minister of Public Service and Administration in South Africa and Tharcisse Karugarama, the Minister for Justice in Rwanda.

Former presidents Ketumile Masire of Botswana and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, will also be in attendance.

Odinga recalled that Kenya's peace and tranquility was shattered by last year's post-election violence and that there was need, as a nation, to look at where the country wanted to go.

He said one of the objectives of the conference was to provide the country with a platform to discuss issues that had kept the country on the edge and how to deal with them in the coming years.

"We have had many occasions to look back in the past, usually through task forces and commissions, the result has largely been to assign blame on who did or did not do what," noted the Prime Minister.

He said the conference will take a break from looking at the past and instead look into the future in terms of where we want to go. "We will be meeting to lay the foundation of the nation we want the next generation to build on," he added.

Odinga said some of the foreign leaders invited had presided over nations that experienced more political turmoil than Kenya did last year, but pulled them out of chaos.

"Some pulled their nations from decades of civil wars and turned them into progressive countries," he observed, adding that Kenyans were particularly keen to hear from Rwanda on how they were able to emerge as a united nation in such a short time after an ethnic conflict that remains unparalleled in recent times.

The Prime Minister said some of the benefits to the country from the conference would be that the findings and recommendations would strengthen on-going efforts in national reconciliation and inter-group harmony that is the central goal of the grand coalition government.

He also said the forum would be used to demonstrate to the world that Kenyans were determined to solve their problems peacefully through open debate and also to strengthen investor confidence by showing commitment to a bright future, complete with a roadmap on how to get there.

Article published courtesy of BuaNews