ByScott Baldauf| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
and Rob Crilly| Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the February 29, 2008 edition

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0229/p01s02-woaf.html?page=2 

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa; and Nairobi, Kenya - After weeks of rancorous negotiations to resolve a postelection conflict that killed nearly 1,500 people, Kenya's two rival parties signed an agreement on power-sharing Thursday.

Under the agreement, President Mwai Kibaki will retain the position of president, although international observers and Kenya's own election commission have declared his election deeply flawed. Opposition leader Raila Odinga will become prime minister, although his powers are decidedly ceremonial.

The pact does not address such key issues as a new Con-stitution, land redistribution, and human rights violations. But with it, Kenya appears to be turning the corner toward a tentative peace. Now begins the work of making politicians set aside rivalries and greed to form a unity government and to urge ethnic communities that have massacred each other to make amends.

 ...

The power-sharing agreement may be the crucial starting point toward peace, but it is perhaps the easiest step. Many analysts anticipate greater difficulty in the days ahead, as the new Kenyan government of national unity takes up the more contentious issues, such as rewriting the Kenyan constitution, balancing the distribution of wealth and land ownership, reining in politically connected militias, and punishing those persons who have instigated or promoted ethnic violence.

"The danger here is that people will say we have an agreement, so let's carry on with our lives," says Jacqueline Klopp, a political scientist and Kenya expert at Columbia University. "The politicians have their agreement, but their militias and their supporters have not demobilized. Until we have some peace-building, some recognition that what we did was wrong, people are not going to just start going back to Eldoret."

By Donald Kirk| Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the February 29, 2008 edition

Seoul, South Korea - The visit to Pyongyang this week by the New York Philharmonic - and American patrons of the orchestra - provided their North Korean hosts with an unaccustomed show of defiance.

During one of the carefully scripted tours of the capital prior to Tuesday's concert, two dozen well-to-do Philharmonic patrons surprised their omnipresent guides by refusing to toss flowers before the enormous statue of the late "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung, father of the current leader, Kim Jong Il.

"They offered us flowers at the hotel to put in front of the statue," says G. Chris Andersen, founding partner of GC Andersen Partners, a New York investment banking firm. "We declined that opportunity, saying we don't do that in our country."

That small act of defiance was one sign of an ambivalence shared by many of the more than 100 musicians, who flew to South Korea to give the final concert of the tour Thursday. While deeply moved by extraordinary displays of hospitality as well as the cheers of the audience, some of the musicians were uncomfortable about playing in a nation suffering from lack of food as well as political persecution.

"How many millions of people could be fed with all they spent on us," asks Enrico DiCCecco, a violinist in his 47th year with the orchestra. "What killed us," he says, is knowing that Kim Jong Il "is starving his own people."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0229/p04s03-woap.html