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KIGALI, April 17 (AFP) - Rwandan rebels and government forces were to hold a second round of truce talks Sunday after a night of shelling in the capital Kigali, littered with bodies after 10 days of ethnic bloodletting.
The two sides were considering each other's conditions for a truce before the United Nations-brokered meeting planned later Sunday.
The army has demanded an end to military operations and "punitive raids" by rebels avenging the massacre of up to 20,000 members of their minority Tutsi tribe by hardline government supporters from the majority Hutu group.
The army also wants security forces to be allowed to patrol Kigali to stem the bloodshed.
The rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front, dominated by Tutsis, has agreed to patrols, but says they must be conducted by joint groups of its fighters and the mainly Hutu government soldiers.
The Front's main demands are the dissolution of the interim government proclaimed after the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana in a plane crash 11 days ago, and the disbanding of the presidential guard.
After Habyarimana's death, clashes immediately erupted between the elite Hutu presidential guard, which claimed that his plane was shot down, and 600 rebel guerrillas billetted in the capital under August peace accords which were to have led to the formation of a coalition government.
The guard assassinated Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyamana because she supported the accords, and killed 10 Belgian UN peacekeepers who tried to protect her.
The members of the interim government have fled Kigali, where the rebels are digging in for a trench and artillery war, and is based at Gitarama, south of the capital.
The two sides met for the first time at a Kigali hotel Friday after days of shuttle diplomacy by UN officials, and have since sent each other lists of "preconditions" for a truce.
The government met Saturday and appointed a new armed forces chief, Augustin Bizimungu, to replace Deogratias Nasabimana, killed with the president on April 6.
Sporadic bursts of gunfire rattled in the streets of Kigali on Sunday morning after a night broken by the thud of heavy weapons fire.
Reporters pinned down at their hotel said fighting seemed to be centered on a telecommunications centre.
The airport was another flashpoint. Belgian Foreign Minister Willy Claes said in Brussels on Saturday that 400 Belgian soldiers were "trapped like rats" at the airport, along with about 100 foreign and Rwandan refugees.
"We have information from very good sources that armed Rwandan (rebel) forces are preparing to attack the airport, while the chaos in Kigali is growing by the hour and anti-Belgian sentiment is still very intense," Claes said.
Belgian troops are seen as pro-rebel, and French forces who have now left as pro-government.
UN officials and diplomats in Nairobi ruled out an international military intervention in the small central African country.
"Rwandans do not see foreign forces as neutral, and the debacle in Somalia has cooled some of the ardour for intervening in African conflicts," a senior Western diplomat said.
Meanwhile columns of civilians carrying bundles of their belongings continued their desperate exodus on foot from Kigali, witnesses said. Some, either Tutsis or people accused of supporting the rebels, were killed by militiamen manning checkpoints, the witnesses said.
Rwanda's bloodbath has sent thousands of people fleeing into neighbouring countries, sparking a regional refugee crisis as aid agencies struggle to set up camps to fed and care for them.
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