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NAIROBI, Jan 6 (AFP) - Seven African heads of state will gather here Saturday for a one-day meeting to discuss the Rwandan refugee crisis, Kenyan officials said Friday.
The leaders will examine the problems caused by two million Rwandans who have sought refuge in neighboring countries, as well as ways to encourage a national reconciliation. They will also exchange views on the situation in Burundi, where Hutu-Tutsi tensions are running high.
President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda was to arrive here later Friday, while Sylvestre Ntibantunganya of Burundi, Pasteur Bizimungu of Rwanda, Frederick Chiluba of Zambia, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and Ali Hassan Mwiunyi of Tanzania were to arrive Saturday morning, foreign ministry officials said.
They were to be received by President Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya at State House, where the talks will take place, the officials added.
Ntibantunganya of Burundi recently said the sub-region was a tinderbox that could explode at any moment if energetic measures were not taken soon by the international community.
According to a source in Burundi reached from Nairobi, Mobutu and Chiluba agreed to call for the meeting after holding talks recently.
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says there are 1.2 million refugees in Zaire, nearly 600,000 in Tanzania, 260,000 in Burundi and 10,000 in Uganda. There are also many Rwandan former high officials and businessmen in Kenya. Virtually all are Hutus, as are 300,000 refugees from Burundi in Zaire and Tanzania.
So far, Rwanda has signed some bilateral agreements with some of these countries, including Zaire, but no regional agreement has been reached.
The Hutus fled ethnic massacres last July after the minority Tutsis's rebel movement, the National Patriotic Front, seized power.
The refugee question is complicated by the presence among the refugees of many former soldiers and officers who were blamed for earlier massacres of Tutsis and of Hutu opposition figures that took place after President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed in a plane crash last April.
Many of these took their weapons with them and in the camps openly speak of returning to Rwanda to wage war on the Tutsis, placing the ordinary refugees in a particularly difficult situation, fearing both the Hutu warlords and the Tutsi in power in Rwanda.
Humanitarian organizations have asked the United Nations to send a force to disarm the Hutus in the camps, but so far without success.
Many Hutus not only fear Tutsi reprisals if they try to go home, but face the fact that their property has been taken over by Tutsis who spent years in exile, mostly in Uganda, before returning as rebels soldiers last year.
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