Undiplomatic sparks fly on 4th in Kenya

From combined dispatches

NAIROBI, Kenya — The United States and Kenya traded sharp barbs yesterday over terrorism, African debt relief and corruption as a celebration marking U.S. Independence Day became a forum for undiplomatic toasts.

William Bellamy, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, startled an audience at a garden party at his official residence with sharp criticism of President Mwai Kibaki’s government for its record on corruption and suggested that pleas for increased foreign assistance for Kenya and other African nations were misguided.

“Turning on the fire hose of international compassion and asking Kenya and other African nations to drink from it is not a serious strategy for promoting growth or ending poverty,” he said.

“The United States is committed to helping Kenya defeat this menace and will provide any and all assistance Kenya requires. We seek from Kenyan authorities a corresponding measure of vigor and commitment in confronting this challenge.”

Three recent high-profile cases in Kenya — linked to the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi that killed 224 persons and a suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in 2002 — have all ended without conviction.

Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network claimed responsibility for both attacks.

Prosecutors last month dropped charges against three men of plotting the 1998 blast and another purported plot to blow up the new U.S. Embassy in 2003. They were further acquitted of conspiracy in the 2002 hotel bombing in Mombasa.

“Kenya’s investigation and prosecution of terrorist crimes remains far below the standard required to deal with the threats at hand,” Mr. Bellamy told his guests.

President Kibaki, who was attending an African Union summit in Libya, was not present, but Kenyan Information Minister Raphael Tuju fired back immediately in an ostensibly complimentary toast congratulating the United States on 229 years of independence.

Mr. Tuju first criticized the U.S. State Department travel warning for Kenya and East Africa, renewed on Friday, which he said unfairly singles out Kenya for terrorism concerns simply because of its proximity to lawless Somalia.

He said the United States unfairly had cut Kenya out of its aid-for-reform program known as the Millennium Challenge Account and unreasonably had excluded Kenya from debt relief being given to other African nations.

“The Millennium Challenge Account that should help run pro-poor projects and directly benefit the poor should not get entangled with the politics of your dissatisfaction with a regime, unless you have decided on a regime change,” he said. The guests laughed nervously.