The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, said yesterday she would travel to Kenya and Tanzania at the weekend to visit the sites of the two embassy bombings last week.
"I will be travelling to Africa over the weekend to visit Kenya and Tanzania," Ms Albright told reporters.
The State Department said it had lifted its warning advising against travel to Kenya and Tanzania, but said US citizens should still exercise caution while visiting the two countries.
The announcement came a week after the car-bomb attack on the US embassies in the Kenyan and Tanzanian capitals, which killed more than 250 people, 12 of them US citizens.
The US has temporarily closed its embassy in Albania, citing a potential Islamic terrorist threat. An embassy spokesman said the decision was taken following declarations by Islamic militants against the US and press reports of US involvement in the arrest of Islamic extremists in Albania.
In Nairobi, dozens of women gathered at the scene of the carbomb. "We have cried until we think we can shed no more tears," said a woman preacher, who led the dignified prayer ceremony.
Members of parliament, community leaders and ordinary women walked towards the devastated site, holding hands and gently singing. Many were in tears as they approached the small pile of rubble which now stands as a memorial to the victims.
Christians, Hindus and Muslims prayed side by side, while a Muslim MP, Mr Elias Baure Shill, said he was saddened that the bombing appeared to have been carried out in the name of his religion.
No credible claim of responsibility has been made for the Nairobi blast or the almost simultaneous attack on the US embassy in Dar es Salaam.
An opposition MP and former presidential candidate, Ms Charity Ngilu, said Kenyans had suffered more than Americans, although they were not the target of the bomb.
"What we see in front of us is death, death, death," she told the crowd. "The bomb was not meant for Kenyans. But we have carried it much more than the Americans."
She said US officials should apologise for saying that Kenyans rushed to the site after the bombing to loot whatever they could find.
Investigators pursued potentially crucial leads in the bombings yesterday. FBI agents pored over the blast site in central Nairobi, looking for clues.
In Albania, where the US has temporarily closed its embassy in Tirana, an embassy spokesman said the State Department had ordered home all non-emergency personnel and the families of employees.
It had also issued a warning to all US citizens on the dangers of travelling in Albania.
Four Islamists were arrested in Albania and extradited to Egypt last month in operations widely reported by the Tirana press to have been conducted with the assistance of the CIA.
An Interior Ministry source said three were suspects in the Luxor massacre last November of 58 tourists and four Egyptians, responsibility for which was claimed by Egypt's largest militant group, al-Gama'a al-Islamiya.
The fourth was sentenced to death by an Egyptian military court last October for plotting to kill government officials.
Speculation that the embassy bombings in Africa may have been staged to avenge the extraditions was prompted by a warning from Egypt's banned militant group, Jihad, last week.