Killing of Kenyan MP overshadows mediation efforts

By David Lewis

ELDORET, Kenya (Reuters) - A police officer in Kenya shot dead an opposition legislator on Thursday, the second killed in a week, triggering fresh protests and interrupting talks to try to end more than a month of violence.

Warning of catastrophe, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said he would travel to Nairobi on Friday from an African Union summit in neighbouring Ethiopia to help his predecessor Kofi Annan, who has been trying to mediate an end to the crisis.

Political and ethnic violence has killed 850 people in Kenya since the disputed Dec. 27 re-election of President Mwai Kibaki.

The instability has shocked neighbouring states and Western donors, and turned Kenya from one of Africa's more peaceful and prosperous nations into its most urgent crisis.

"Violence continues, threatening to escalate to catastrophic levels," Ban told the 53-nation African Union summit.

African leaders also voiced alarm. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said the continent's image was at stake.

The unrest has taken the lid off decades-old divisions between communities over land, wealth and power, dating from British colonial rule and stoked by Kenyan politicians during 44 years of independence.

Fresh protests erupted on Thursday after David Kimutai Too, an opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) member of parliament, was killed in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret.