Kenya's opposition party said it will try again Friday to hold a banned anti-government rally in the country's capital, after hundreds of protesters at Thursday's planned march were met with tear gas and water cannons.

Supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga destroy a billboard poster of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki in Nairobi on Thursday.
(Darko Bandic/Associated Press)

Thursday's planned protest, a show of defiance against president Mwai Kibaki, was postponed until Friday by opposition party leader Raila Odinga over safety concerns. 

In a telephone interview with CBC News on Thursday from Nairobi, opposition party official Miguna Miguna said they planned to go to "a public park and express our outrage at the rigging of the election, call for peace, and demand that the will of the Kenyan people should be allowed to prevail."

The dispute over Kibaki's re-election has triggered deadly clashes between party supporters that have claimed the lives of more than 300 people over the past week, according to the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the International Federation for Human Rights.

Following the protest's cancellation, Kenya's president said he was ready for talks with opposition leaders, saying he'll engage in dialogue "once the nation is calm."

However, a mass protest Friday could again set the stage for clashes between security forces and opposition supporters.

"I am ready to have dialogue with the concerned parties once the nation is calm and the political temperatures are lowered enough for constructive and productive engagement," Kibaki told reporters outside Nairobi's State House.

Police armed with rifles and clubs patrolled the streets of Nairobi, guarding against trouble from Thursday's promised "million man" protest march.

Odinga's party, the Orange Democratic Movement, claims that last week's presidential election was rigged.

International poll observers have cited irregularities in the vote, including unexplained delays in vote counting and a 115 per cent turnout in one constituency.

"We are a peaceful people who do not want violence," said William Ruto, a top Orange Democratic Movement official. "That is why we are peacefully dispersing now."

Odinga's party would hold another meeting on Jan. 8, he added.

Some 100,000 people have been displaced during the riots and clashes.

Calls for mediation

Last-minute talks between opposition officials and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu about potential international mediation to resolve the dispute peacefully may have contributed to the cancellation, observers said.

Tutu flew to Nairobi and met Odinga, saying afterward that the opposition candidate was ready for "the possibility of mediation." Tutu gave no details, but said he hoped to meet Kibaki as well.

Government spokesman Alfred Mutua told The Associated Press that Kibaki had no plans for such a meeting, and Kenya, once considered one of Africa's most stable nations, had no need for mediators.

"We are not in a civil war," he said.

Miguna said his party has always called for an internationally-mediated settlement.

But he added Kibaki must resign before talks could take place.

"It appears the government is unwilling even to have negotiations take place," Miguna said. "If he is not willing to leave peacefully, then we will remove him."

He said there were three options available to Kenyans to remove Kibaki from power, including another election, a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience similar to Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution and, if necessary, force.

"We are saying that we are not yet there," he said. "If you are refusing to mediate, then the people have a choice."

Parties trade genocide accusations

Meanwhile Thursday, the country's attorney general also called for an independent body to verify the vote tally in the disputed election.

Kenyan legislators backing Kibaki also urged the International Criminal Court to bring charges against Odinga and other opposition leaders for "ethnic cleansing and genocide."

Odinga, in turn, toured Nairobi's city mortuary, which was full of piles of bodies of babies, children, young men and women. Some were burned, while others had head wounds, according to the Associated Press. Many did not have visible wounds.

It was unclear when they had died, but opposition officials said some were killed Thursday.

"What we have just seen defies description," Odinga said after the visit. "We can only describe it as genocide on a grand scale."

Genocide is defined as the deliberate and systemmatic destruction of an ethnic, religious or national group.  

'No peace,' protesters chant

Earlier in the day, huge numbers of protesters gathered in the outlying slums of Nairobi and were ready to head to the city en masse in defiance of a government ban on the protest, freelance reporter Richard Lough told CBC News on Thursday from Nairobi.  

Marchers attempting to reach Nairobi's central Uhuru park brandished branches and white flags and demanded the resignation of Kibaki, amid chants of "No peace."

Kibaki, a member of Kenya's dominant Kikuyu tribe, was sworn in for another term Sunday immediately after the results were announced in the closest election in Kenya's history.

The swearing-in sparked massive riots in the slums outside the capital and in the western provinces, considered the heartland of opposition support.

Both sides have accused each other of genocide in the subsequent clashes between Kikuyus and Odinga's Luo tribe. Aid agencies have reported tens of thousands fleeing the Rift Valley region in the country's west in fear of ethnic-targeted violence.

Human rights groups have said Kikuyus were immediately targeted following the election, but there are numerous reports of reprisal attacks on Luos.

'We could hear the sirens'

Meanwhile, a Canadian woman who arrived in Edmonton from Nairobi on Wednesday night described her harrowing ordeal trying to get out of the embattled country.

Melodie House, who worked with her son at an orphanage in neighbouring Rwanda over the holidays, said the two were forced to sleep in the basement of Nairobi's airport overnight amid fears the violence could spread to the terminal.

"Nairobi was horrible," she told reporters upon her arrival in Edmonton. "The airport lost power several times. When we were eating dinner, the windows were open and we could hear the sirens."

With files from the Associated Press