Kenya summons US ambassador over Delta Air Lines cancellation

Jun 3, 2009, 20:08 GMT

Nairobi - Kenya on Wednesday summoned the US ambassador to explain why a new Delta Air Lines flight linking the capital Nairobi and Atlanta was cancelled at the last minute.

The first flight to Nairobi via Dakar, Senegal was due to leave on Tuesday, but it was cancelled after the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) refused to clear the route owing to security concerns.

Delta was also forced to cancel planned flights to Liberia.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula was furious that the notification of the cancellation came via an email message to newsrooms late on Tuesday night, saying it was tantamount to a travel advisory against Kenya.

US Ambassador Michael Rannenberger, speaking to journalists after meeting Wetangula, said that the flights were merely postponed and that everything was being done to ensure the route would be operational soon.

Kenya was desperate for the route to being operation as its tourism industry, hit by the double whammy of 2008's post-election violence and the global credit crisis, continues to struggle.

The East African nation was hoping that the flights, coupled with US President Barack Obama's Kenyan ancestry, would help boost tourism and trade.

The TSA's concerns most likely stem from unrest in Kenya's neighbour Somalia, where Islamist insurgents with alleged links to al-Qaeda are fighting the government.

Kenya has already been hit by several terror attacks. In 1998 over 200 people died in a bombing at the US Embassy in Nairobi. Four years later suicide bombers killed 15 people at an Israeli-owned hotel on the Kenyan coast.

Diplomats say that foreign fighters from Afghanistan and Iraq are pouring into Somalia and that they could use the lawless state to plan regional attacks on Western targets.

However, the Kenyan government says Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport - which major airlines such as British Airways fly to - is secure.

'The government of Kenya has complied with all the additional security measures requested by Delta and Nairobi airport's security is excellent,' government spokesman Alfred Mutua said in a statement.