Kibaki reached out to Raila after 2007 polls even before Kofi Annan came in: Francis Muthaura

After President Kibaki was announced the winner in the presidential contest against the then-opposition leader Raila Odinga on December 27, 2007, civil unrest broke out leading to the death of thousands.

A month after the humanitarian crisis, Muthaura says, President Kibaki was willing to reach out to Mr Odinga and call the violence to an end.

Speaking exclusively to Citizen TV, Muthaura says that Mr Odinga turned down the president's invite, maintaining that he would only welcome an external mediation which prompted a visit by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

"What happened is that we talked to Raila and he said he wanted an external mediation because he cannot be sure that we will be impartial," he said in the interview aired on Sunday.

"Raila did not want, he did not trust the president so he wanted an external mediation and that's what happened."

In his capacity, amid the ongoing unrest, Muthaura revealed that crisis management teams were immediately created which also took part in advising President Kibaki.

"We created three committees; one was dealing with road blockages, the other one with humanitarian aspects (settling displaced persons) and the other one was to assess the damage," he said.

"The violence was not all over the country. A lot of it was in the Rift Valley, some sections in Nairobi, the Coast so we had to address the underlying issues."

He went on to add that since the violence was mainly ethnic-tied, a Kalenjin police officer, for example, could not be deployed to the Rift Valley region to help bring neutrality in the violence-prone regions.

Kofi Anaan's mediation saw the two conflicting sides successfully brought to a negotiating table, leading to the signing of a power-sharing agreement called the National Accord and Reconciliation Act on February 28, 2008.

The Act established the office of the Prime Minister which was occupied by Mr Odinga and also created the coalition government.