NAIROBI (AFP) - The Rwanda tribunal's most wanted man, Felicien Kabuga, who allegedly bankrolled the 1994 genocide, is most likely not in Kenya, that country's prime minister Raila Odinga said on Saturday.

"We have asked our security personnel to track and arrest Mr. Kabuga, but they did not succeed, and this is what leads me to believe information that we have that Mr. Kabuga is not in this country," Odinga said in an interview with AFP.

He added that foreign and international security personnel have also failed to find Kabuga in Kenya.

Kenyan authorities have repeatedly denied that Kabuga, an ethnic Hutu businessman, is in the country.

Officials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) say that if the Kenya government is able to declare he is no longer in the country it should also be able to say when he left and for which destination.

In 1998 an ICTR team scored a near miss when they raided a Nairobi house allegedly rented from a nephew of former president Daniel Arap Moi and found a note indicating Kabuga had been tipped off by Kenyan police.

Born in 1935, Kabuga is said to be a frequent traveller to various African nations where he buys protection.

He was thrown out of Switzerland in 1994, and spent some time in Democratic Republic of Congo before seeking refuge in Kenya, where he has escaped several arrest attempts.

As recently as March the UN Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs Patricia O'Brien chided Kenya for doing little to arrest him

The United States has put a 50-million-dollar (35-million-euro) reward out for information leading to Kabuga's arrest.