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DAR ES SALAAM, July 10 (AFP) - Rwandan government officials, rebel representatives and international observers have been arriving in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha for peace talks starting there Friday.
The Kigali government and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) plan three days of talks aimed at bringing about a ceasefire after 21 months of civil war in the small highland nation in central Africa.
Senior Tanzanian government sources said the two sides wanted to pave the way for further talks on the ethnic and political difficulties that have pitted the ruling majority Hutu tribe against the minority Tutsis.
The RPF comprises mainly Tutsis, who traditionally ruled Rwanda until a massive uprising by the majority Hutu before independence in 1962, when at least 100,000 Tutsis were reported to have been massacred while many thousands of others fled to neighbouring Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire.
The rebels invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda in October 1990.
Tanzania is mediating the peace talks.
A Tanzanian foreign ministry official told AFP that current Organisation of African Unity (OAU) chairman Abdou Diouf of Senegal, would not attend the talks as earlier reported, but would be represented by his country's ambassador to Kenya.
Uganda, Zaire and Burundi are among observers attending the talks, with the United States, France, Britain and the former colonial power in Rwanda, Belgium.
The RPF had set out to topple the government of President Juvenal Habyarimana in Kigali, but are now seeking representation in a coalition headed by an opposition leader and formed recently as part of an ongoing transition to multi-party democracy.
The talks here follow fighting around a refugee camp for more than 40,000 people at Miyove in northeastern Rwanda, where officials accused the FPR of shelling the camp early Tuesday.
more AFP AFP SEQN-0122
