As chairman of the African Union, Kikwete has recently emerged as a key ally and kingpin of the US in the region. Although this same message had already been passed to Kibaki by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had visited Nairobi barely a week earlier, Kikwete's intervention was bound to meet with a better reception in Nairobi considering that he came to the Kenyan capital wearing two hats - president of a neighbouring fellow member of the East African Community as well as chairman of the African Union.
His visit to Nairobi had added significance in the wake of thinly-veiled threats by the US government, the European Union and even the United Nations of an intervention in the country if the mediation talks failed.
It was US top diplomat Jendayi Frazer who early this month on the sidelines of a summit meeting of the African Union in Ethiopia first issued the threat that the international community would impose a solution on Kenya if the mediation process led by Kofi Annan collapsed. If any such intervention was indeed being contemplated, the person who would have known its scope and full consequences would have been the chairman of the African Union.
Hence, the theory that Kibaki capitulated in the face of the threat of an AU-led military intervention in the Kenyan crisis. It appears that the US and other Western powers were worried that without concerted and sustained pressure, the AU would treat the Kenyan crisis with the same lukewarm approach it has adopted on Zimbabwe. Kikwete's intervention indicates that the Tanzanian president, who came to power in 2005, is gradually becoming the linkman of the US in the region, having replaced Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni. Signs that the US now considers President Kikwete its chief regional ally came in September 2006 when it emerged, to Nairobi's fury, that Kikwete had discussed Kenya's "instability" with President Bush during a visit to the White House.
Kikwete's rise as a regional kingpin has been bolstered by a high-profile anti-graft campaign he recently launched that has seen former powerful members of Tanzania's ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), fall one after another - allowing him to redraw power centres and reform the grand old party. He dissolved the Cabinet after he had accepted the resignation of his prime minister, Edward Lowassa, and two other ministers, Nazir Karamagi and Ibrahim Msabaha, who were both implicated in a major corruption scandal. The ministers and several other officials were accused of interfering with an energy contract to favour the US-based Richmond Company, contravening laws and rules on procurement.