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Al Shabaab defeat will bring regional peace, says Saitoti
The Star
Sunday, February 05, 2012

Regional peace, crucial to Kenya’s tourism industry, is closer to realisation with the capture of strategic strongholds of the al Shabaab in Somalia, the government has said. Internal Security minister George Saitoti said Somalia's stability is crucial to Kenya's tourism industry, which has already suffered several setbacks due to al Shabaab's penetration into Kenya.

“The capture of al Shabaab’s strongholds in Somalia gives us hope that Somalia is nearing freedom from captivity, which is good news to our own country’s tourism industry,” said Saitoti at a peace summit in Mombasa.

In October last year, Somali al Shabaab militia crossed into Kenya and abducted two female Spanish aid workers and two Kenyan colleagues, and later released the Kenyans. This was barely a month after a tourist was abducted from an island in Lamu and taken into Somalia where she died later.

At the same time, Kenya has reiterated that the incursion into Somalia has nothing to do with any territorial takeover. "We maintain that there is no intention of being in Somalia longer than necessary," Saitoti said on Wednesday. Denmark has criticised the international community for its late intervention in the Somalia situation.

Danish minister for Development and Cooperatives Christian Friis Bach accused the international community of ‘'looking the other way’' for a long time. “The issue is not a regional problem but for the whole world. But now I’m happy we have had a change of heart,” said Bach. He said the only way to counter extremism is by insisting even more on democracy. Saitoti said Kenya has been sympathetic to Somalia, hosting more than 500,000 Somali refugees.

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