Is violence in Kenya ethnic cleansing?

WASHINGTON — The State Department backed away Wednesday from its top African envoy's description of post-election violence in Kenya as "ethnic cleansing," saying it was too early to characterize the situation in such terms.

In comments aimed at easing emotional reactions to the phrase and potential comparisons to Rwanda's genocide and the ongoing conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, department spokesman Sean McCormack indicated that Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer had been speaking for herself when she used the term "ethnic cleansing."

"She made some comments based on her firsthand assessment from a trip several weeks ago," McCormack told reporters, pointedly refusing to repeat the words, which refer to targeted attacks on and forcible displacements of specific ethnicities by people from other ethnic groups.

Asked repeatedly if the Bush administration shared Frazer's assessment, he replied: "She said what she said. I am going to stick to what I said." He also said that much of the violence was the result of "political tensions."

McCormack acknowledged that the situation in Kenya was of great concern and that some violent incidents and displacements appeared to be driven by ethnicity, especially in the western Rift Valley province.

"There's a serious issue of people being displaced for a variety of different reasons, including being forced from their homes based on ethnic identification," he said.

But those incidents are being reviewed by the State Department's Office of War Crimes Issues and no determinations have been made on defining them, he said.

"If they do document any instances of atrocities, we'll have to look at what next steps to take, but at this point we're not there yet," he said. "Very often, the case with these kind of circumstances is that you don't have a full understanding, a complete picture of what happened until after the situation is over and things have calmed down."

Earlier Wednesday in Ethiopia, Frazer said some of the violence in Kenya, which exploded after disputed elections last month and has claimed more than 800 lives, amounted to "ethnic cleansing" as it targeted members of certain tribes. She later explained her choice of words in a news conference.

"The first wave of this violence, it was primarily in the Rift Valley, and it was Kalenjin pushing out Kikuyu. But that may now be spreading to Kikuyus pushing out Luos and Kalenjins," she told reporters on the sidelines of an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.