Kenyan PM to face off with deputy for presidency

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who made a failed bid for the presidency in 2007 polls that ended in deadly violence, announced Saturday that he will run again next year. "I commit myself to the people of Kenya and the Coalition for Reform and Democracy by accepting the nomination to be its presidential flag-bearer," said Odinga, who lost to current incumbent Mwai Kibaki in a December 2007 vote that triggered a wave of deadly unrest. Odinga will face his deputy Uhuru Kenyatta, who is charged with crimes against humanity in the unrest, in the March 4 polls. The International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, has charged Kenyatta, the son of Kenyan founding father Jomo Kenyatta, over his alleged role in the unrest, in which at least 1,100 people were killed and more than 600,000 were displaced. "I will never let you down," Uhuru Kenyatta said at a rally in Mombasa, on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast. Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka initially planned to run for the country's top job, but said Saturday that he had shelved his "personal presidential ambitions in favour of Prime Minister Raila Odinga." In 2007, then opposition leader Odinga accused Kibaki of rigging his re-election. Political riots after the election quickly degenerated into ethnic killings. The violence, the worst since independence in 1963, shattered Kenya's image as a beacon of stability in East Africa.