.pem file not recognized by Keychain

I am using AWS Cloud Services, when I create an EC2 instance Amazon automatically generates a Security Certificate in .pem file extension, it downloads to my computer, when I click it or try and import it to Keychain, there is an error. Terminal commands cannot locate the file. I used Homebrew to try and convert the file to .12, that will not work given the file cannot be located.

Any thoughts?

Replies

re-did instance and new key, i can connect to AWS but keychain still does not accept the PEM file, I can proceed so it's not an issue at this point