Citation
DAR ES SALAAM, April 21 (Reuter) - Tanzania said on Thursday Rwanda's
government and rebels agreed to talks on Saturday in a bid to end more
than two weeks of civil war and mass killing.
The bloodshed, in which hundreds of thousands of people may have died,
was triggered by the April 6 killing of the Rwandan and Burundian
presidents as they were returning from peace talks in Tanzania.
Tanzanian President Ali Hassan Mwinyi said the conference in the
northern town of Arusha would focus on ending the tragedy in Rwanda
through a ceasefire and implementing a peace pact signed last year.
In separate meetings on Wednesday, Mwinyi urged visiting Rwandan
Interior Minister Faustin Munyazesa and a delegation of the rebel
Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) to end hostilities.
Mwinyi told Munyazesa and other Rwandan officials that the disaster
sweeping Rwanda was apparently the result of delays in putting into
action the Arusha peace accords to end three years of civil war.
He told RPF vice-chairman Patrick Mazimhaka that Saturday's talks would
focus on the best ways of implementing the accord in view of the new
political situation since the president's death.
Rwanda's President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed along with President
Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi when their plane was downed by a rocket
as it came into land in the Rwandan capital from Dar Es Salaam.
Abdulrahman Kinana, Tanzanian minister of state for defence, toured
Tanzania's border with Rwanda on Thursday and said the headquarters of
the army's 21st battalion had been moved closer to the frontier to
block any possible spillover of violence.
We have our boys there to deal with any eventuality,
he said after
visiting Rusamo bridge facing southeastern Rwanda.
No words can describe the scene,
the colonel said. It is not right
or fair to see innocent people being killed just because of ethnic
differences. A solution has to be found.
Tanzanian Prime Minister John Malecela ordered the police commander in
the northern district of Mwanza to arrest Rwandan and Burundian
refugees who had publicly celebrated the deaths of the presidents.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
