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The church has a key role to play if Kenya is to achieve peace and stability for the future, several speakers said Friday.

The new English version of Rev. Dr Fernando Enns' book, "The Peace Church and the Ecumenical Community", was officially launched during the WCC Central Committee meetings on Thursday.

With peace seemingly returning to the country, churches within and outside Kenya take stock of the experiences made during a month of unrest and violence. Ecumenical visitors recall moving encounters and seek to understand.

As mediation to solve the disputed Kenyan presidential election enters a critical phase, top-level figures from the two parties met an international ecumenical delegation, which asked them to move on from the electoral dispute and seek a compromise solution.

In Burundi, where democratic elections in 2005 fostered hopes for peace and democracy, recent crime and violence has caused the churches there to fear for the nation's stability. An ecumenical delegation led by former Mozambique president, Joaquim Chissano, visited the central African country at the invitation of the National Council of Churches in Burundi, 28-31 January. Chissano has gained international recognition for a successful disarmament...

As Kenyan churches are struggling to help prevent the country from descending into genocide, they envision a long term healing effort that will require the sustained engagement of international ecumenical partners.

Churches working for peace amidst a wave of post electoral violence in Kenya will receive a pastoral and solidarity visit of an international ecumenical delegation sent by the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 30 January to 3 February.

In a statement issued yesterday, the heads of churches in Jerusalem and the Holy Land called on the international community and the state of Israel to end the current siege on the Gaza Strip which has caused most recently cuts in electricity and limited the shipments of medicine, fuel, food and other goods across the border.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia has called on Kenyan political leaders to keep moving towards dialogue while praising the countries' churches for their role in peacemaking.

Representatives of the world's Historic Peace Churches gathered in Solo, Indonesia in December 2007. This was the third in a series of international conferences of the peace churches, invited by the Decade to Overcome Violence program of the World Council of Churches. Previous gatherings had been held in Beinenberg, Switzerland, in 2001; and in Kenya in 2004.