Gay rights 'non issue', Kenyan president says ahead of Obama visit

Nairobi

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Tuesday dismissed gay rights as a "non-issue" ahead of US President Barack Obama's visit later this week.

Kenyatta also said Deputy President William Ruto, who is still on trial at the International Criminal Court in the Hague accused of crimes against humanity, would also meet the US leader.

"That is a non-issue to the people of this country, and it is definitely not on our agenda at all," Kenyatta said in response to a question about gay rights.

"We as a country, as a continent, are faced with much more serious issues which we would want to engage the US and all our partners with."

Obama's planned Kenya visit was itself long delayed by Kenyatta's indictment by the ICC.

Those charges, linked to post-election ethnic violence in 2007-08, were suspended last year in part, prosecutors say, because the Kenyan government thwarted the investigation by intimidating or paying off witnesses. Kenyatta said Obama would meet all members of the government.

"Without a doubt, he is coming to meet the government that is in place, that includes all of us," Kenyatta told reporters, standing alongside Ruto. "We shall all be meeting." Ruto has spoken out against homosexuality, telling worshippers in church early this month it was "against the plan" of God. 

"We have heard that in the US they have allowed gay relations and other dirty things," Ruto said, according to the Daily Nation newspaper.