By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 31, 2008; A15

NAIROBI, Jan. 30 -- The top U.S. diplomat for Africa said Wednesday that the post-election violence in Kenya amounted to "ethnic cleansing" and that both President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga should be doing more to calm tensions.

Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said she had met with Kenyans who described being chased from their homes by organized groups that were "trying to get other ethnic groups to leave certain areas."

"That sounds like ethnic cleansing to me," Frazer told reporters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, where she is attending an African Union summit.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack backed off the remarks, saying the department was still compiling information on the violence and had not drawn any conclusions.

The term "ethnic cleansing" has no strict legal definition but generally refers to violently forcing people out of an area to separate them from another group.

The disputed Dec. 27 presidential election touched off a chain reaction of politically and ethnically charged violence and plunged this East African country into its worst crisis since independence from Britain in 1963.

Nearly 300,000 people have been forced to flee Nairobi's poorest neighborhoods and cities, towns and villages stretching from the lush tea farms of central Kenya to the explosive Rift Valley region in the west of the country.

In that area, people from Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe and others living on Kikuyu land have been targeted by local tribal militias loyal to Odinga that appear to be using the crisis to settle old scores about land.

In recent days, thousands of Kikuyus have begun exacting revenge, attacking and dislodging several thousand people from Odinga's Luo tribe and other ethnic groups presumed to have backed him in the western towns of Nakuru and Naivasha.

On Tuesday, a high-ranking Kenyan diplomat described the violence as well organized, saying it was "an open secret" that scores of young, unemployed Kikuyu men were recruited from several Nairobi slums, paid money and bused to the two towns to launch attacks with machetes and clubs.

"They even raised money in public," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

More than 800 people have been killed since Odinga accused Kibaki of stealing the election. International election observers have said the tally was so flawed it is impossible to know who won. The victims have included hundreds of protesters who opposition leaders say were gunned down by police.

Former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan is mediating between the two sides, and the European Union and several countries have threatened to cut aid to Kibaki's government if he does not reach a compromise with Odinga.

The U.S. State Department initially congratulated Kibaki but later expressed doubts about the vote tally. More recently, Ambassador Michael E. Ranneberger said it was premature to discuss withholding any U.S. aid for Kenya, though Frazer said Tuesday that officials would revisit the issue. The aid package is expected to total more than $540 million this year.

Although the Bush administration has stated that promoting democracy is a key foreign policy goal, the United States has continued to increase aid to and maintain relationships with several countries that held seriously flawed elections in recent years. The list includes Nigeria, Uganda and Ethiopia -- a key partner in the administration's counterterrorism efforts whose government gunned down opposition protesters after disputed elections in 2005.

"If the international community responded constructively and forcefully to obvious electoral abuses, you might not see what we have in Kenya today," said Ted Dagne, an African affairs specialist with the Congressional Research Service in Washington. "In each of those cases where we witnessed electoral and human rights abuses, the response from Washington was mute or limited."

Special correspondent Kassahun Addis in Addis Ababa contributed to this report.