Luis Moreno Ocampo said he told President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga that he would ask the Netherlands-based court's judges to allow him to formally open an investigation into the violence that followed a contentious presidential election.

The fighting erupted along tribal lines amid accusations by the opposition that Kibaki's ruling party rigged presidential elections. Odinga was his rival, and the violence ended when they agreed to a power-sharing arrangement.

Kenyans whose loved ones were butchered during the spasm of violence that lasted from December 2007 to February 2008 have doubted that those responsible would ever face justice in Kenya, where the courts are seen as weak and susceptible to corruption.

Harun Mwangi Macharia, whose 3-year-old daughter died when the church her family sought shelter in was torched, was gratified that there might now be trials.

"So that it is a lesson for future generations, they should be prosecuted without mercy," Macharia said of the culprits, adding that if they are not prosecuted, violence will be "inevitable" during Kenya's next nationwide vote in 2012.

More than 600,000 people were displaced, more than 40,000 buildings were burned, and more than 3,000 women were raped, many allegedly by the police, in Kenya's worst violence since winning independence from Britain in 1963.

Kibaki and Odinga said yesterday that the government would fully cooperate with the court, even though some cabinet members are suspected of being organizers of the savagery.

Rwandan Genocide Sentence

A U.N. war-crimes tribunal yesterday sentenced

a former chief of Rwanda's tea-processing and marketing agency to

eight years in prison for his role in the country's 1994 genocide.

Michael Bagaragaza, 64,

had pleaded guilty to "complicity to commit genocide" in September. He was a member of the party that was in power during the 100-day slaughter of members of the Tutsi ethnic minority and political moderates from the Hutu majority.

Judge Vagn Joensen said

a three-judge panel of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ruled that Bagaragaza would get credit for the four years he spent in detention since his arrest in August 2005 and so would serve for four years.

Delivering his 20-minute judgment before a packed gallery in Arusha, Tanzania, Joensen said the judges took into account Bagaragaza's guilty plea, claims of remorse, and

his voluntary surrender.

Bagaragaza had admitted that in April 1994 he used the tea factory of Rubaya, Gisenyi Prefecture, in northern Rwanda to stock arms and ammunition that were used by the extremist Hutu militiamen. He also confessed to giving them money, beer, and vehicles from the factory.

- Associated Press