Leadership deal wins approval

Kenyan lawmakers unanimously approved a power-sharing deal, bringing together two men whose dispute over the presidency unleashed weeks of deadly violence.

President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga both claimed victory in the Dec. 27 presidential election, which observers said was so flawed by rigging that it was impossible to say who had won. Under the deal, Odinga will fill the newly created post of prime minister.

The dispute over the election tapped into a well of resentment over land and wealth that resurfaces regularly at election time in Kenya, but this year’s bloodshed was the most brutal and sustained by far. More than 1,000 people died in the unrest. Much of the violence was ethnic, pitting other tribes against Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe, long resented for its dominance of politics and business.