Kenya's President was referring to the violence in S Sudan, but stopped short of spelling out any action to end the increasingly ethnic slaughter.
Four months of fighting between government and
rebels in the world's newest nation has raised fears of a wider
conflict that could further destabilise a fragile region and send
hundreds of thousands more refugees over borders.
Uganda, another neighbour of oil-producing South Sudan, has already
sent in troops to back the government. Regional bloc IGAD, which is
brokering troubled peace talks, has said it will hold a meeting in
coming days to "consider options".
"We refuse to be witnesses to such atrocities and to remain helpless and
hopeless in their wake," Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a
statement late on Friday.
"We especially reject the possibility that we are creeping into
genocide again in our region. We shall not stand by and allow it to
happen."
Fighting began in December between troops loyal to South Sudan
President Salva Kiir and his sacked deputy, Riek Machar. Clashes spread
quickly beyond the capital, often pitting Kiir's Dinka people against
Machar's Nuer. The United Nations said rebels slaughtered hundreds of
civilians when they seized the South Sudan oil hub of Bentiu earlier
this month, hunting down men, women and children who had sought refuge
in a hospital, a mosque and a Catholic church. The rebels dismissed the
accusations.
Days later, Dinka residents of Bor town in Jonglei state attacked a
UN base where about 5 000 people, mostly Nuer, were sheltering, the UN
said. Kenyatta's use of the word "genocide" has resonance in a region
that has vowed never to see a repeat of the ethnic slaughter of hundreds
of thousands of Rwandans twenty years ago.
The stalled talks are due to resume in Ethiopia on Monday to try and
thrash out a deal on political reform after a long power struggle
between Kiir and Machar triggered the unrest. South Sudan's government,
under growing pressure from regional and Western powers to end the
conflict, on Friday released four senior political figures it had
accused of helping start the violence in a bid to seize power.
Machar's negotiation team on Saturday welcomed the release of the
four detainees: a former top ruling party official, national security
minister, deputy finance minister and ambassador to Washington, after
treason charges were dropped. But rebel spokesman Hussein Mar Nyot said
another of their key demands, the exit of Ugandan troops and other
militia supporting the government, had not been met.
"If these forces from outside are withdrawn, this will give a very
strong ground for peace to come," Nyot told Reuters. US Secretary of
State John Kerry will travel next week to Ethiopia, another South
Sudanese neighbour which is leading the mediation, to discuss peace
efforts in the region.
South Sudan declared independence from Sudan in 2011 under the terms
of a peace deal that ended decades of civil war fuelled by ethnicity,
religion, ideology and oil rights. - Reuters
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