U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is urging Kenyan leaders to share power, threatening to hold back American aid money if no deal is reached.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, left, and Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki discussed peace deals in Nairobi on Monday.
(Kenyan Presidential Press Service/Associated Press)

Rice, on a one-day visit to the volatile eastern African country on Monday, met with the President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga.

"The time for political settlement was yesterday," she said after the meetings. "The current stalemate and the circumstances are not going to permit business as usual with the United States or I think with any other part of the international community."

Kibaki and Odinga have been at odds since a Dec. 27 election returned Kibaki to power for a second five-year term. Foreign and local observers say the vote was rigged and violence has raged in the country ever since, much of it pitting Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe against other ethnic groups.

More than 1,000 people have been killed, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

The United States has already placed visa bans on 10 Kenyans blamed for post-election violence.

Rice said Washington is ready to rebuild destroyed homes and help resettle Kenyans who have been displaced, but only once a power-sharing deal has been reached.

Rice meets with Annan

While in Kenya, Rice also met with former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, who is mediating peace talks.

Annan announced last week that Odinga and Kibaki had agreed to an independent review of the election and to draw up a new constitution within a year. But the two rivals remain deadlocked on proposals to share power, and the two sides have not agreed on whether to hold a repeat election.

The country's foreign minister, Moses Wetangula, has insisted that while international help is welcome, a solution must come from within Kenya.

Rice said Monday that the call for power sharing "is not a matter of dictating a solution to Kenyans."

"It is Kenyans who are insisting that their political leaders find a solution to this crisis," she said.

Power-sharing negotiations were to continue Tuesday.

With files from the Associated Press