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NAIROBI, Jan 7 (AFP) - Leaders from seven African nations meeting here Saturday urged the creation of "safe corridors" for returning Rwandan refugees and called on the new Rwandan government to work harder for internal peace.
But they clashed over demands for national reconciliation in a session marked by angry disagreements.
The presidents of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia and the prime minister of Zaire agreed a brief statement after their five-hour closed-door meeting backing the United Nations international criminal tribunal, set up in November to try those responsible for the April to June massacres in Rwanda.
Up to a million people -- mostly ethnic Tutsis -- are thought to have been killed between April and June last year in Rwanda and hundreds of thousands of Rwandans, both Hutu and Tutsi, displaced both within and outside the country.
The joint communique urged the creation of "safe corridors" to allow refugees in camps in Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire safe passage to the Rwandan border and through into the country itself.
They also announced that they supported the "separation of the suspected perpetrators of the genocide from innocent refugees," within the camps but did not say how this would be done.
At the end of November, a first group of 26 Hutu militiamen thought to be responsible for some of the massacres were arrested and handed over by Zaire to the authorities in Kigali.
A member of the Rwandan delegation said the most controversial point was how to bring about national reconciliation. The Rwandan authorities have so far refused to negotiate with parties they consider implicated in the genocide -- thought to have been organised by groups loyal to the former president Juvenal Habyarimana.
The delegate, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an unspecified number of delegations had insisted that the government allow members of Habyarimana's former ruling National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND) into its own ranks -- something the government has refused.
Rwandan President Pasteur Bizimungu and Zairean Prime Minister Kengo wa Dondo appeared shortly afterwards coming out of the meeting room, continuing a loud argument within earshot of attending journalists.
Dondo accused the Rwandan president of failing to "establish peace" in Rwanda.
"You ask us to establish peace and democracy, but you haven't got them youselves," Bizimungu retorted.
Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi said before the summit: "The question that should be uppermost in our minds is how to prevent such a catastrophe as was witnessed last year from repeating itself."
"It is only through a genuine process of national reconciliation that a cycle of violence in our sister state can be avoided," he said.
Delegates said the glaring absence of Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, the only head of state to stay away from Nairobi, detracted from the meeting's ability to decide effective measures. Zaire shelters hundreds of thousands of refugees among whom are numbered thousands of Hutu former soldiers and militia fighters.
From the statement, it was difficult to see if any practical measures would follow, as demanded before the summit by Rwanda's Rehabilitation and Reintegration Minister Jacques Bihozagara.
Bihozagara told journalists before the meeting he wanted transit zones to be set up for returning refugees, the countrywide deployment of human rights observers, and extra UN soldiers -- 5,500 -- to police the operation.
He said UN troops were needed in particular to separate the former regime's soldiers and militia from refugees in giant camps in Zaire and Tanzania where they continued a campaign of intimidation.
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AFP AFP
