By Wangui Kanina

NAIROBI, Feb 7 (Reuters) - The United States has imposed travel bans on 10 Kenyans suspected of being behind ethnic violence that has convulsed the country since President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election, officials said on Thursday.

The move came as pressure mounted on Kenya's feuding parties to resolve a crisis triggered by the Dec. 27 polls that has killed more than 1,000 people and uprooted some 300,000 others.

The violence has shattered Kenya's image of stability, horrifying locals, neighbouring states and world powers alike.

U.S. Embassy officials in Nairobi said five of those banned were politicians while the rest were prominent business people, but declined to give further details.

Western nations have used such sanctions in the past against Kenyan corruption suspects, including high-level politicians.

"There is a precedent for even a head of state and their families to face bans," one Western diplomat said, referring to a European ban on Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe.

"The threat of the ban is more effective then the ban itself," the diplomat added, saying that several countries were considering taking such measures against Kenyan suspects.

Canada's envoy in Kenya has publicly threatened to ban politicians guilty of stoking tribal violence, and diplomatic sources say Britain may do likewise.

Kenya has taken its own steps against a former British envoy to Nairobi, Edward Clay, banning him from visiting after he clashed with Justice Minister Martha Karua during a TV interview last month. Clay is vocal critic of corruption in Kenya.

TALKS

Former U.N. boss Kofi Annan is leading international mediation efforts at a hotel in Nairobi where officials from both parties met on Thursday for more talks.

Having agreed on principles to stem violence and help refugees, negotiators are now stuck on the original bone of contention -- who won the December vote.

Annan denied media reports on Thursday that his suite in the hotel had been bugged. "That's news to me," he said.

U.N. security staff were sweeping Annan's accommodation regularly, a spokesman said.

Foreign ministers of the regional bloc IGAD are also in town to meet Annan, while leaders of another regional economic bloc, the East African Community, were due to arrive on Friday.

The opposition, which accuses Kibaki's team of rigging the vote, had threatened to hold more street protests over the meetings. They say Kibaki is seeking to legitimise his position "through the back door" by playing host.

Kibaki's aides say their man won the vote fairly, and the election board declared him winner on Dec. 30.

Beyond the ballot, the crisis has laid bare divisions over land, wealth and power that date from colonial rule and have since been stoked by politicians, particularly at election time.

The European Union's aid chief Louis Michel was also in Nairobi on Thursday. He met Annan and was due to meet Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga later.

Also expected in Kenya on Friday for a three-day visit is the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, John Holmes.

Highlighting the impact of more than a month of unrest, an aid agency warned on Thursday that nearly a quarter of the country's maize crop is thought to have been left unharvested as farmers fled their fields.

CARE International said maize prices had shot up by around 50 percent in Nairobi and by up to 300 percent in slums in the western town of Kisumu, an opposition stronghold.

On Thursday police said they would charge one of their officers with murder after he was filmed shooting dead two young protesters in Kisumu last month in what rights groups and the opposition slammed as extrajudicial killings. (For special coverage from Reuters on Kenya's crisis see: http ://africa.reuters.com/elections/kenya/) (Additional reporting by Duncan Miriri, Daniel Wallis, Bryson Hull) (Writing by Daniel Wallis, editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

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