October 28, 2006	Saturday	Shawwal 4, 1427

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NAIROBI, Oct 27: FIFA's suspension of Kenya from international football will not help end woes plaguing the sport in the east African nation, the chief of Kenya's soccer governing board said on Thursday.

As the country reeled from Wednesday's confirmation it had been banned from international play for the second time in two years, Kenya Football Federation (KFF) chairman Alfred Sambu said he hoped to resolve the matter soon.

“These are harsh decisions but we must have a solution quickly and return Kenyan football to where it belongs,” he said in a statement. “I believe the issues will be resolved and Kenyans should have no cause for alarm.”

But Sambu stressed that the underlying causes of FIFA's decision had to be addressed if the sport was to recover in Kenya.

FIFA warned the KFF that the suspension would remain until the implementation of all reform measures agreed at a January meeting in Cairo and another accord aimed at improving Kenyan football management.

Despite a FIFA order to merge the 20-team KFF Premier League and 18-team Kenya Premier League (KPL), which contains all but two of the KFF PL squads, into a single 18-team league, they have gone ahead with separate fixtures.

KFF has resisted reducing the current number of teams from 20 to 18 because its constitution allows for 20 sides and Sambu called an emergency meeting of the KFF board for Friday to consider how to meet the FIFA demands.

But, he maintained that altering the constitution would not end the chaos Kenyan football has been embroiled in over the past 18 months.

“The only cause for alarm which I can see will continue to thrive in Kenya is the development of a new kind of culture which does not respect the instruments of governance,” Sambu said.

“This is the problem,” he said. “The solution does not lie in changing leadership, or banning organisations or suspending an organisation. The solution lies in all of us insisting on the supremacy of these institutions.”

FIFA said in a suspension letter to the local board that sporting rules, the integrity of competitions, and FIFA's decisions were “regularly violated or ignored by members of the Kenyan football family.”

FIFA first suspended Kenya for three months in 2004 for government interference but the situation was reversed after the country agreed to draw up new statutes.—AFP