Why Annan picked Geneva for talks

• Participants will reflect more on coalition, says chief mediator

Chief mediator Kofi Annan has told journalists why he chose Geneva as the venue for the meeting to assess the performance of the grand coalition government a year after it was formed.

The former UN secretary-general said experience showed that holding a meeting away from the scene of the problems gave participants a chance to reflect more on the issues and provide useful proposals on the way forward.

“Experience has taught me that moving people away from the theatre of the happenings is helpful. I thought it would be helpful to everybody to come together at a distant place to look at what has been achieved, the successes and the challenges,” he said.

That was the same reason, he said, why he took members of the talks team from Serena Hotel to Kilaguni Lodge in the Tsavo National Park for a closed-door session. He hoped they could quickly reach an agreement.

However, the Kilaguni effort failed as PNU and ODM sides failed to agree.

“It took us 41 days during the mediation process to reach a fruitful agreement. You even remember that I had to take them to Kilaguni,” he said.

Mr Annan was briefing Kenyan journalists on the ‘Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation: One year Later’ in Geneva on the eve of the conference.

The former UN secretary- general said he was not surprised that President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga decided to skip the Geneva meeting, even though the two were signatories to the National Accord that ended two months of post-election violence last year.

Not attend

He said President Kibaki had informed him from the beginning that he would not attend while Mr Odinga told him last week that members of the Serena team would represent the government at the conference. The PM had even been listed as a key speaker during the meeting.

Deputy PM Musalia Mudavadi is leading the government delegation that includes Cabinet ministers Martha Karua, Moses Wetang’ula, James Orengo and Mutula Kilonzo.