Citation
KIGALI, March 2 (AFP) - Rwandan rebels, who signed a peace and government pact last year, have refused to take part in any coalition established by President Juvenal Habyarimana and accused him of terrorism.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) said in a statement broadcast on national radio late Tuesday that it "will not participate in a government established on a basis of compromise obtained by terror."
After tribal fighting last week in which several dozen people died, the FPR denounced what it described as "barbaric acts carried out by militiamen in the pay of the president."
The rebels from Rwanda's minority Tutsi ethnic group set several terms for taking part in a transitional government and parliament as agreed under the peace pact signed in Arusha, Tanzania, last August, to end three years of civil war.
The broad-based interim institutions were to have been set up two months ago, but opposition parties have quarrelled over the make-up of the new authorities and accused Habyarimana of high-handedness over appointments.
Habyarimana, who first seized power in a military coup in 1973 and installed a regime made up largely of northerners among the majority Hutu, called a meeting last week among political leaders to discuss new proposals.
The FPR responded Tuesday that premier-designate Faustin Twagiramungu "should be given back his right to choose the ministers forming the government, as planned before the growing process of intimidation exercised by President Habyarimana was launched."
The rebels also warned "Habyarimana and his loyalists, who continue to threaten the lives and tranquility of Rwandans" that the Front "will no longer stand by with folded arms."
UN special representative to Rwanda Jacques Roger Booh-Booh, who met FPR military and political leaders Tuesday at Mulundi, almost 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Kigali, called on them to "favour dialogue" and "prepare for acceptable political compromises."
In a statement, Booh-Booh also called on Rwandan leaders "to face up to their responsibilities" before the small highland nation in central Africa "plunges into insuperable difficulties."
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