Citation
KIGALI, April 9 (Reuter) - France and Belgium sent troops to Rwanda on
Saturday to prepare for an airlift of foreigners as the country lurched
towards all-out civil war following two days of tribal bloodletting.
Rwandan rebel leader Paul Kagame rejected a new interim government in
Kigali and said his forces would attack and take this central African
country's rambling hillside capital, where relief workers say the death
toll may already number thousands.
But Kigali itself, where parliament speaker Venat Sindikubwabo
announced the formation of a stop-gap government, experienced its first
sustained period of calm in three days in anticipation of the start of
a U.N.-brokered ceasefire.
We cannot accept the new president. He is among those who are linked
to the murder of civilians in Kigali,
Kagame said in a broadcast on
rebel radio monitored in neighbouring Uganda.
Anyone who attempts to stop them (rebel forces) is our enemy. We are
moving on Kigali. Any government forces that want to join us are free
to do so.
The bloodletting, which followed Wednesday's rocket attack killing of
President Juvenal Habyarimana and his counterpart from neighbouring
Burundi, pitted members of the majority Hutu tribe against the minority
Tutsi, the former feudal overlords.
The Tutsi dominate Kagame's Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF).
Kigali residents reported the capital calm early on Saturday after
sporadic overnight shooting.
One said dozens of corpses littered the streets alongside wounded
people, who lay bleeding with no-one to attend to them.
It was pathetic, really. Just death and lonely suffering. We've never
seen anything like this before,
the resident said.
Troops from the presidential guard, loyal to Habyarimana, a Hutu,
patrolled the streets and many residents were barricaded in their own
homes, fearing widespread killings.
We've heard reports of a ceasefire, but no one is certain of anything
here. I doubt it will hold,
the resident said.
The officer commanding Belgian U.N. peacekeepers in Kigali spoke of
fresh fighting. Asked earlier whether a ceasefire was holding, Colonel
Luc Marchal told Belgian radio: Certainly not. The two sides are still
fighting.
Rwanda and Burundi have a bloody history of tribal rivalry. Tens of
thousands of members of both tribes have died in recurring bouts of
ethnic bloodletting.
Relief workers said Burundi, where up to 50,000 people died in violence
following the October assassination of that country's first
democratically elected Hutu president, was calm.
Parliament speaker Sindikubwabo announced in a broadcast on state radio
on Saturday he had taken over as interim president after consultations
with other political groups.
Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu serving in a four-party
coalition with Habyarimana, was killed by soldiers on Thursday and
three ministers were kidnapped.
Sindikubwabo, a Habyarimana ally, said his government only wanted to
restore order and wanted to contact the RPF with a view to setting up a
transitional government within six weeks.
RPF forces have fought fierce battles with the presidential guard over
the last two days. They deployed 600 fighters in Kigali after talks
began on setting up a transitional government under a peace accord
reached in Tanzania last August.
Sindikubwabo named a six-member cabinet including Jean Kambanda as
prime minister. Kambanda is from a faction of the splintered opposition
Democratic and Republican Movement that is Hutu-dominated and which
opposes any cooperation with the RPF.
Kagame said his troops had made an irreversible decision to fight a
clique he identified as two political parties close to Habyarimana and
to end days of anarchy.
Government and military sources in Brussels said Belgium was sending in
paratroops to prepare for an airlift of foreigners from its former
colony, where 10 Belgian U.N. peacekeepers were killed trying to save
the slain prime minister.
Some soldiers have already left, but the main contingent will leave
later today,
said one source, who asked not to be identified.
The idea was that we would go in after the French had secured the
airport in Kigali,
said another source.
French troops, according to U.N. officials and diplomats in New York,
arrived in Kigali one three planes earlier to secure the airport for a
possible evacuation of some 600 French nationals. Belgium has 1,500
nationals in Rwanda.
France said on Saturday the decision to send soldiers had been taken
in the face of the spread and the worsening of the violence in
Kigali
.
The diplomats said the French operation was designed to open the
airport so that other countries, such as Belgium and the United States,
could send evacuation planes.
The United Nations has a force of 2,500 troops in Rwanda, including
more than 400 Belgians.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
