ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) – The wife of reggae star Bob Marley said yesterday that she plans to exhume his remains in Jamaica and rebury them in his “spiritual resting place” – Ethiopia.

No date has been set for the reburial, but it will be after February when month-long celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Marley’s birth are planned in Ethiopia. Both the Ethiopian church and government officials support the project, Rita Marley told The Associated Press.

“We are working on bringing his remains to Ethiopia,” said Rita, a former backing singer for Marley’s band, The Wailers.

“It is part of Bob’s own mission.”

Born in 1945 in St Ann, Jamaica, Bob Marley rose from the gritty shantytowns of Kingston to global stardom with hits such as No Woman, No Cry and I Shot the Sheriff. His lyrics promoting “one love” and social revolution made him an icon in developing countries worldwide. Bob Marley died of cancer in Miami in 1981 at age 36.

Rita Marley said her husband would be reburied in Shashemene, 250 kilometres (155 miles) south of Addis Ababa where hundreds of Rastafarians have lived since they were given land by Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie.

Hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans embraced Selassie as their living god and head of the Rastafarian religious movement.

Marley was a devout Rastafarian, a faith whose followers preach a oneness with nature, grow their hair into long matted strands called dreadlocks and smoke marijuana as a sacrament.

“Bob’s whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica,” said Rita, who married Marley in 1966. “Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place.”

The announcement stirred controversy in Jamaica, however, where a representative of the Bob Marley Foundation said there were no plans to move the star’s remains in February, but could not say if there were plans to move the body at a later date.

Last month, the Jamaica-based charitable foundation, chaired by Rita Marley, announced plans to lobby the Jamaican Government to make Marley a national hero.

Roger Steffens, a Marley historian and reggae archivist, called the news of a reburial “an appalling development for Jamaica”.

“Bob never expressed any interest to be buried in Ethiopia,” Steffens said by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “They don’t believe that Selassie is god in Ethiopia, and that was the prime motivation behind Marley’s music. The country that created the faith of Rastafari is Jamaica, not Ethiopia.”

Together with the African Union and the UN children’s agency, Rita Marley has organised celebrations in Ethiopia, including a concert on Marley’s birthday, February 6, to be held in Addis Ababa.