APW19980417.0520 NEWS NEWSWIRE The Kenya Tourist Board launched a major campaign Friday to woo European tourists back to Kenya after reports of violence on the Indian Ocean coast and crumbling infrastructure kept tens of thousands away. By all accounts, the 1997-98 season that ran from July to April is the worst on record with dozens of hotels on the coast closed and thousands of Kenyans employed in the industry laid off throughout the country. KTB Chairman Eliud Mahihu said the campaign, the first of its kind in the four-decade history of Kenyan mass tourism, will target key markets in Germany, Britain, Switzerland and Italy through sponsored trips for travel writers and advertisements directed at tour operators. The country that received a tremendous boost in tourism from the 1983 film ``Out of Africa,'' has always relied on tour operators to sell its game reserves, tented camps and seaside resorts, said the KTB's technical adviser Jim Flannery. And until the early 1990s, he said, ``Kenya was undisturbed by real competition.'' The Gulf War, the end of apartheid in South Africa and the opening of other sun holiday destinations such as the Dominican Republic and Cuba have steadily cut in to the flow of tourists to the former British colony. Although the number of visitors has been declining since 1990 _ the KTB says holiday arrivals overall have dropped by 23 percent _ tourism still is Kenya's largest single source of foreign currency earnings and brought in dlrs 500 million in 1996. Kenya Airways and the Dutch carrier KLM, which owns 23 percent of the Kenyan national carrier, have each contributed 10 million shillings (dlrs 166,600) to the KTB campaign. The European Union is the other major donor to the KTB's dlrs 1 million share of the dlrs 2 million campaign budget. Local and international operators are expected to contribute the remainder in cash and kind. Ever since politically motivated ethnic violence on the Indian Ocean Coast _ the destination of 60 percent of all tourists to Kenya _ erupted in August, killing at least 60 Kenyans, the government has blamed biased reporting in the international media for the stark downturn in tourism. No tourists were targeted or injured in the attacks that appeared directed mainly at non-coastal Kenyans, and there has been no public investigation into the violence and no official explanation for it. Observers say the attacks appeared to be organized by people connected with the ruling Kenya African National Union Party in order to chase KANU opponents out of Coast Province before general elections. The Kenya Human Rights Commission said 200,000 people fled. KANU and President Daniel arap Moi carried the province in December elections. ``We all know there is nothing wrong with the tourism product in our country,'' said Kenya Airways Managing Director Brian Davies. ``It just needs supporting, and the government has the job to provide infrastructure and security.'' (sl)