Kenya yesterday claimed to have lodged a diplomatic protest to Tanzania after what the authorities said their Energy Cabinet Secretary Charles Keter was denied entry to the port of Tanga on Wednesday.
Sources within the Kenyan presidency said the government had instructed Kenya’s High Commission in Tanzania to get an explanation about the incident.
“As per the East African Community treaty, Tanzania has to give this explanation and it is not something that we have to request,” the source said.
Separately, Kenyan State House spokesman Manoah Esipisu said the Foreign Affair ministry was handling the matter, which had come as a surprise.Contacted for comment, Kenya’s High Commissioner to Tanzania Chirau Ali Mwakwere asked this reporter to contact him later because he was holding talks with his guests.
However, two hours later the Kenyan diplomat could neither receive phone calls from the reporter nor respond to a text message.
But an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, East Africa, Regional and International Cooperation said the alleged diplomatic protest from the Kenyan government was yet to reach the ministry.
“It might be because today (yesterday) is a public holiday and we won’t work on Saturday through Easter Monday,” said the official, adding that lodging such a protest entailed a long diplomatic process.
Keter and his delegation had joined their Ugandan counterparts on the trip to Tanga after leaving Lamu on a fact-finding mission.
However, the Kenyans were denied entry to Tanzania and their passports seized for about an hour while their Ugandan counterparts were allowed to proceed.
The mission was as a result of Monday’s meeting between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni over the proposed crude oil pipeline route from Uganda.
The delegation was to find the most viable port of entry for the proposed pipeline after it emerged that Uganda had signed an agreement with Tanzania over the same.
The Guardian reported yesterday that Tanzanian officials denied the Kenyan delegation entry to the port after it emerged that they were not on the official list of invited visitors.
Tanga Regional Commissioner Martin Shigella said: "We were only notified about the Ugandan minister’s visit to the port. The Kenyans were not on the official list of accompanying delegates that we received from the (Tanzanian) Ministry of Energy and Minerals.”
The RC explained that on the basis of suspicions that the Kenyan delegation might be a group of impostors, Tanzanian immigration officials proceeded to temporarily confiscate their passports to verify their identities.
“It was a normal verification exercise ... we wanted to be sure of their nationality and government titles,” Shigella said.
The Kenyan officials were later given back their travel documents, but still barred from entering the port area without proper authorization as their mere presence in the country had not been officially communicated to the Tanzanian government.
Apart from Keter, the Kenyan delegation also included the country’s Principal Secretaries for Petroleum and Energy Andrew Kamau and Joseph Njoroge, respectively.
The chief executive officer of the Lamu Port Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor project, Sylvester Kasuku, was also part of the uninvited Kenyan entourage.
The tour by the Ugandan minister and her team was part of preparations for construction of a planned crude oil pipeline from Uganda to Tanzania via Tanga port scheduled to begin later this year.
According to RC Shigella, the Ugandan visitors declared their satisfaction with the port's performance and facilities at the end of their inspection tour.
State House spokesman Gerson Msigwa said the agreement with Uganda for the pipeline’s construction through Tanzania was already a done deal despite the ongoing desperate maneuvering by Kenya for the project.
Presidents John Magufuli (Tanzania) and Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) jointly announced the agreement after meeting in Arusha early this month and a project implementation plan has already been signed between the responsible ministers from both countries.
The idea remains to fast-track the project, especially after global energy giant Total – an interested party - assured President Magufuli that the $4 billion needed for the project was already available.
Although Museveni has since held talks with Kenyan President Kenyatta in Nairobi about the possibility of switching the pipeline route back to Kenya rather than Tanzania, no such agreement has been reached. The two are said to be set for further talks in Kampala in a couple of weeks’ time.
Officials say Tanzania beat Kenya in the race for the pipeline because of its more favourable geographical position and safer route. Concerns have been raised about the fact that the proposed Kenyan route runs through areas near Somalia where al-Shabaab terrorists are known to be quite active.
Kenya also has a long history of protracted land compensation disputes which could further delay the pipeline project. A recent study has furthermore noted that Lamu port, which is where the Kenyan route is supposed to end, is yet to be built.
On the other hand, Tanzania already has a port in Tanga which could be effectively expanded at a relatively fast speed to act as a hub for the export of Ugandan oil to international markets. The country also doesn’t have the kind of land compensation complications experienced in Kenya.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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