Related: Tension Arises in Kenya's Rift Valley After Second MP's Death

                World Pressure Mounts on Kenya to Seek Solution to Crisis

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is due in Kenya Friday to bolster efforts aimed at ending the political crisis which has engulfed the east African nation.

A statement from the UN office in Nairobi said Ban who held talks with Kenyan leader Mwai Kibaki on Thursday at the sidelines of the African Union summit underway in Addis Ababa would support efforts by his predecessor, Kofi Annan, who is trying to broker peace between feuding parties in Kenya.

Speaking at the AU summit, Ban urged Kenyan leaders to find a peaceful way out.

"Kenyan leaders, President Kibaki and ODM (Orange Democratic Movement) leader Raila Odinga in particular, have a special responsibility to do everything possible to resolve the sources of the crisis peacefully. I call on the Kenyan people to stop the killings and end the violence now before it's too late," he said.

The UN chief met President Kibaki in Addis Ababa and said he would travel to Nairobi the next day to meet opposition leader Raila Odinga.

"Tomorrow (Friday) I will go to Nairobi. I will meet Odinga and some representatives of civil society," Ban told reporters in Addis Ababa.

Ban Ki-moon was one of several persons expressing such sentiments in speeches to the opening session of the African Union.

Sources who attended the meeting said Kibaki went to Addis Ababa against the advice of many who thought he might have been better off staying at home in light of the ethnic violence gripping his country.

His rival in December's disputed election, ODM leader Raila Odinga, had been refused the opportunity to attend, and party leaders had charged the African Union of favoring Kibaki's position in the election dispute.

The UN chief, however, treated both equally, reminding them of their responsibility to halt the violence.

Nearly 900 people have died and 300,000 displaced in political and ethnic clashes since last month's elections, which the opposition says were rigged.

The UN chief's statement comes as talks between government and opposition have been postponed.

Substantive negotiations started for the first time on Thursday but were adjourned until Friday after an opposition lawmaker was shot dead by a policeman in the western town of Eldoret.

"We have postponed this afternoon's session and we will work all day tomorrow (Friday) so that the leaders can attend to urgent matters and call their constituents," Annan told reporters in Nairobi.

The former UN chief appealed to Kenyans to uphold calm and avoid taking the law into their own hands.

"I appeal to all Kenyans to maintain peace and not to take the law on their own hands," he said. Both sides of the negotiating team expressed hope, saying they were happy with progress achieved so far.

The developments come amid tension which has gripped the country following the second death of an opposition lawmaker in Rift Valley town of Eldoret.

A policeman shot dead Ainamoi Member of Parliament David Kimutai Too and a policewoman in what security chiefs are calling a crime of passion.

The ODM legislator was shot dead in Eldoret shortly after 10 a. m. (0700GMT). A policewoman companion, Eunice Chepkwony, was also shot and later died in hospital.

Riots later erupted in Eldoret, Kericho, Kisumu and Siaya towns following news of the MP's death, coming at a time of heightened political tension following the disputed results of the presidential election a month ago.

Angry crowds have marched on the Eldoret police station, where they were dispersed by officers firing shots into the air.

Trucks have been set on fire outside the town, while members of President Kibaki's Kikuyu community have been fleeing the Rift Valley town, seen as an opposition stronghold.

Police chief Hussein Ali said the assailant Andrew Maoche, a traffic policeman, was arrested about 40 kilometers away at Turbo township while attempting to flee. He will be charged in court on Friday with the murders.

"The constable will stand charges of murder tomorrow (Friday)," Ali told a news conference in Nairobi. Too is the second ODM lawmaker to be shot dead in less than a week following the murder of the Embakasi MP Mugabe Were on Tuesday morning outside his Nairobi home.

The MP, he said, picked a woman constable from Eldoret police station at 9.30 am and drove in a Toyota Carina to West Indies residential estate. The suspect then followed them on a motorbike.

According to the government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, the suspect was the dead woman's live-in boyfriend.

The police boss warned the public against using the incident to incite others. The warning came following the fluid political situation in the country.

"It will be wrong for people, including politicians to use the incident to incite the public," Ali said.

However, Odinga's ODM party have rejected the police explanation of Too's murder and said it was a government attempt to reduce the number of ODM lawmakers in parliament.

"How do they get the information to back up these kinds of claims? It is really suspicious that any time a killing of this nature happens, the police have a ready answer," Ababu Namwamba, a lawyer and ODM lawmaker.

"That in itself raises very serious suspicions that indeed this is part of a wider scheme to eliminate the leadership of the opposition in this country," he said.

While Kibaki was declared the victor of the presidential election, the ODM won twice as many seats as Kibaki's party in the parliamentary race held on the same day.

During the AU summit, the pan African body's chairman Alpha Oumar Konare told the leaders that they could not just sit by. "If Kenya burns, there will be nothing for tomorrow," he said.

Konare said it was the AU's duty to support the mediation process. Kenya is a country that was a hope for the continent. " Today, if you look at Kenya you see violence on the streets. We are even talking about ethnic cleansing. We are even talking about genocide," he said.

"We cannot sit here with our hands folded," Ghana's President John Kufuor, in his capacity as outgoing AU chairman, expressed satisfaction at the work of the Annan mediation panel, which he appointed after his own peace-making efforts stalled.

But Kufuor also felt obliged to express his discomfort at speaking in front of his African Union colleague and fellow president, Kibaki. "It is my painful duty in this connection to refer to recent developments in Kenya, a prosperous and stable country in Africa that got embroiled in conflict," he said.

President Kibaki is among more than 40 leaders present at the AU summit in Addis Ababa, even though the ODM called on the AU not to recognize him.