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NAIROBI, Feb 15 (AFP) - Kenya's President Daniel arap Moi has said a guerrilla movement similar to the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) was in the process of being formed to instigate bloodshed in the country and overthrow the government, the press reported here Wednesday.
Earlier this month, the government issued a statement saying that the February Eighteen Movement (FEM) -- a previously unheard of rebel movement -- had embarked on a subversive campaign aimed at toppling government.
On Tuesday, Moi told a gathering in the town of Molo in the Rift Valley province that another rebel group called the Kenya National Patriotic Front (KNPF) was working in collaboration with FEM to cause civil strife in Kenya "as happened in Rwanda and Burundi".
Molo was one of the areas ravaged by tribal clashes which hit the Rift Valley between 1991 and 1993.
He said KNPF was similar to the RPF which he said had caused "untold suffering and bloodletting in Rwanda", the official Kenya Times newspaper quoted him as saying.
The RPF, whose members were drawn mainly from the minority Tutsi tribe in Rwanda, formed the government in the central African country in July 1994 after defeating troops loyal to the Hutu-dominated regime of president Juvenal Habyarimana who was killed in a suspected rocket attack on his plane in April last year.
Habyarimana's death sparked an unprecedented ethnic massacre pitting mainly Hutus against Tutsis. Between 500,000 and a million people, most of them Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were estimated to have been killed.
Moi did not say where the KNPF was based or whether any members had been arrested, but the statement about FEM had suggested that the guerrilla movement was based in Uganda, where its alleged leader a Brigadier John Odongo lives in exile.
Uganda denied that there was any anti-Kenyan government rebels in its territory and said John Odongo was an "ordinary refugee".
Moi also repeated his warning to opposition politicians that they will be arrested and charged if they continued to insult him during their political rallies.
jnm/msa AFP AFP
