The Associated Press reports that US Envoy Jendayi Frazer has called the violence in Kenya "ethnic cleansing". She has also blamed President Mwai Kibaki and Opposition leader Raila Odinga for not doing enough to stop the violence.

"I think both sides have spent quite a lot of time, and unhelpful time, in the public," Frazer said.

Frazer was speaking in Addis Ababa where Kenya is the main agenda on the summit's discussion. BBC television also played an audio recording of the American envoy for Africa pointing out the playing of messages on the radio and a concerted campaign prior to the election to incite the expulsion of certain groups from the Rift Valley. 

Reuters reports that South African officials fear that the crisis in Kenya "could be disastrous for the whole continent." Paul Kagame, Rwanda's president, has suggested that Kenya's military might need to be called in. 

Odinga, who says the country is drifting into anarchy, has called on African leaders not to recognise Kibaki, who has so far only been accepted by a small string of nations.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula told Reuters on Tuesday the AU would not let Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement send officials to the meeting. The AU declined to comment...........

Although outside intervention has failed to bear fruit in Kenya, analysts say they already dwarf attempts to resolve turmoil elsewhere on the world's poorest continent, reflecting concern over losing a stable hub for trade and tourism.

"If the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo had received half the attention that Kenya has attracted ... two million Congolese lives might have been saved," says New York-based Kenyan historian Ali Mazrui.

Full report here