Citation
KIGALI, April 7 (Reuter) - Rwanda's President Juvenal Habyarimana,
killed in a rocket attack on Wednesday, was struggling to stop power
slipping from his hands as his country slid back towards civil war and
famine.
Habyarimana, 57, and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira, 38, both
died when the rocket destroyed the plane they were travelling in as it
approached the airport in the Rwandan capital Kigali. They were
returning from regional peace talks in the Tanzanian capital Dar es
Salaam.
Rwanda's supreme ruler for 17 years until a rebel invasion in 1990,
Habyarimana held on to power steadfastly despite accepting a peace pact
last year that reduced his influence.
The former major-general spent much of this year trying to assuage
Western anger and appeared on the brink of installing a new
transitional government despite a political stalemate since December.
In the face of strong U.N. warnings of renewed civil war, famine and
economic chaos and accusations by opponents that he was behind delays
in implementing peace accords, Habyarimana maintained Rwanda was on the
verge of a breakthrough to peace.
He pledged to heal tribal rifts between his majority Hutus and the
minority Tutsis and to end three years of civil war.
But Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels, camped around
the hilltop parliament in the centre of Kigali since December, held him
responsible for what they said was a campaign of evasion.
The RPF invaded Rwanda from neighbouring Uganda in October 1990, adding
to a series of economic problems including famine and a foreign
exchange squeeze.
Accusing Habyarimana of being corrupt and undemocratic, the RPF posed a
severe military test for one of the world's poorest countries which had
dedicated government spending to modest development programmes.
Habyarimana, a Hutu, took power in a bloodless coup in 1973 that ousted
Gregoire Kayibanda, Rwanda's first president, also a Hutu, who had been
in office since independence from Belgium in 1962.
He was confirmed as president in single-candidate elections in 1978,
1983 and 1988, when he won a final five-year term with 99 per cent of
the vote.
Tutsi land and cattle owners once lorded it over the peasant farming
Hutus as the aristocrats of the region. In 1959, three years before
independence from Belgium, the Hutus overthrew Tutsi dominance in a
bloody rebellion that sent tens of thousands of Tutsis fleeing to
neighbouring countries, especially Uganda.
Habyarimana promised during his years in power to give fair
representation among the tribes -- about 85 per cent Hutu, 14 per cent
Tutsis and one per cent Twa -- but some Tutsis felt this meant they
were totally excluded from power.
Critics also said Habyarimana had favoured Hutus from the north, his
own region, at the expense of those from the south.
A small, neat man, he ruled until 1990 with a firm hand and his
political party, the Revolutionary Movement for National Development
(MRND), penetrated throughout society.
But he bent with the changes sweeping Africa and responded to calls for
pluralism by installing an opposition-dominated transitional government
in April 1992 to pave the way for a multi-party democracy.
He entrusted the task of holding peace talks with the RPF to the
transitional government and under the Arusha peace accords signed last
year his MRND would take five of 22 positions in the new government.
The new cabinet including the RPF should have taken power in December
before pluralist polls in 1995. Habyarimana was sworn in as president
for the 22-month transitional period in January.
Criticism within the country, especially about corruption, was often
directed more towards Habyarimana's entourage than towards the
president himself, who diplomats said lived modestly.
They said Habyarimana's low-key style and concentration on economic
management initially won him much popular support.
But disaffection grew as Rwanda slid into economic crisis, due partly
to a collapse in the price of coffee, the country's main export, and
food shortages caused by overpopulation.
Habyarimana, who survived a coup atempt in 1980, was born on March 8,
1937, at Gasiza in the northwest of Rwanda, and educated at St Paul
College, Bukavu, in Zaire, where he studied humanities.
After a year at the Lovanium Faculty of Medicine, Kinshasa, he turned
to soldiering in 1960 before independence in 1962.
Habyarimana studied at the Louvain Cadet School in Belgium and Kigali
Officers School. He became chief of staff of the National Guard in 1963
and played a major role in the defeat of insurgent Tutsi forces in that
year.
Two years later he was appointed Minister of the National Guard and
Police and was promoted to major-general in April 1973.
Habyarimana married Agatha Kangika in 1963. They had seven children.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
