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BRUSSELS, March 8 (AFP) - Belgium on Monday recalled its ambassador to Rwanda for consultations and warned it could reassess its civilian and military cooperation policy with its former African colony.
A foreign ministry communique said the move followed the release of an internationally prepared report on human rights violations in Rwanda, which is wracked by a bloody civil war.
A multi-national investigation in the densely populated little country since 1990 has found evidence of the massacre of civilians and the discovery of mass graves, the ministry said.
The Rwandan ambassador to Belgium, Francois Ngarukiyintwali, was also summoned to the foreign ministry to hear a demand that Rwandan authorities take measures to end human rights abuses and punish those responsible, the official statement said.
Belgium also called on the Kigali government to "abstain from any reprisals against witnesses who enabled the investigation to be carried out."
Since October 1990, Rwanda has been torn by a rebellion mainly by formerly exiled members of the Tutsi minority against the Hutu regime of President Juvenal Habyarimana.
A ceasefire due to take effect by midnight (2200 GMT) on Tuesday was signed Sunday at peace talks in Arusha, Tanzania, after heavy fighting flared up early this year when the rebels accused the majority Hutus of massacring Tutsis.
Aid agencies in Rwanda have said the upsurge of violence had left up to a million people homeless, raising fears of mass starvation that could equal the horrors of Somalia's famine.
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