WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund on Thursday welcomed a power-sharing agreement in Kenya but said the country faced challenges to ensure economic stability and growth following post-election violence.

Kenya's parliament still needs to approve the deal that will bring opposition leader Raila Odinga into a "grand coalition" government with President Mwai Kibaki.

Kibaki's disputed re-election sparked looting, riots and ethnic clashes that killed at least 1,000 people and displaced 300,000 others.

"The issues facing Kenya remain challenging in terms of now coming forward with safeguarding macroeconomic stability and reinvigorating growth which clearly would then require also support from private investment," IMF spokesman Masood Ahmed told a regular news briefing.

Kenya's IMF loan program expired in November. At the time it was expected that a successor IMF economic program would be negotiated once a new government was in place.

Ahmed said that discussion was just beginning in the IMF.

"We are now beginning a conversation around that, but it is too early for me to take a view or to give you a view on whether and how that conversation would go forward and what timetable there will be in terms of any program," he said. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Carol Bishopric)

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