Nairobi - Armed attacks that killed dozens of people in the run-up to Kenya's last election were organised by officials of the ruling party, says a report released in Nairobi on Friday.
Human Rights Watch, an international agency based in New York, said ethnic violence in Kenya's Coast province before the 1997 election was carried out by "a quasi-military force of well-organised and well-armed attackers".
In the report, called Playing With Fire, some of the men who perpetrated the violence told Human Rights Watch that they were recruited by senior politicians associated with the ruling Kenyan African National Union.
President Daniel arap Moi won re-election in 1997 under the Kanu banner with 41 percent of the vote.
During the violence, people from the indigenous Digo ethnic group attacked people from other ethnic groups who had migrated to Coast province in search of work.
The Digo had mainly voted for Kanu in 1992 while the outsiders voted against the party, causing it it lose two parliamentary seats.
People from the other ethnic groups fled the clashes before voting day and as a result, Moi's "vote tally rose considerably in violence-affected areas that previous had been opposition strongholds", says the report.
"The perpetrators of the Coast attacks were largely disgruntled young men whose hostility toward non-indigenous residents of the region led them to support a divisive ethnic agenda that also served the ruling party's political aspirations," says the report.
"The evidence strongly suggests that higher-level government officials and politicians contributed to the organisation of the raider force and supported the operations of the raiders once the violence was unleashed."
The report voices concern that similar tactics could be used in Kenya's next election, due by the end of the year.
Human Rights Watch called on the government to take action to prevent politically motivated violence and to call to account those who orchestrated and carried out past violence.
A government-appointed commission of inquiry into the violence submitted its report to the president in 1999 but the findings have not been made public. - Sapa-DPA