NAIROBI, Kenya — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton began a major trip to Africa on Wednesday by publicly urging Kenya, a strategic U.S. ally, to move faster to resolve tensions lingering from a disputed 2007 election that precipitated the country’s worst crisis since independence.
Clinton went further in a private meeting with Kenyan leaders, urging them to sack the attorney general and the police chief, who have been accused of ignoring dozens of illegal killings carried out by police death squads.
She also raised the possibility of banning some Kenyan officials from traveling to the United States if the government does not move more quickly to prosecute those responsible for post- election ethnic violence that left 1,300 people dead. The organizers are believed to include senior officials and Cabinet ministers, many of whom have family members in the United States.
“We are going to use whatever tools we need to use to ensure that there is justice,” a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. “We raised the possibility of visa bans and implied there could be more.”
Clinton’s public remarks were more gentle but still reflected the Obama administration’s concern that Kenya, which has lent crucial support to U.S. humanitarian, diplomatic and military operations in this volatile region, could slip back into political and ethnic violence that brought it close to collapse last year.
Clinton’s trip comes just three weeks after President Barack Obama visited Ghana and laid out his emerging policy toward Africa. Like Obama, whose father was Kenyan, Clinton is emphasizing good governance and touting a $20 billion U.S.-led program to provide poor countries in Africa and elsewhere with agricultural aid aimed at small farmers.
