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KINSHASA, March 15 (AFP) - Food rations distributed in camps for Rwandan refugees around the eastern Zairean town of Goma have been halved and in some instances cut by two-thirds, relief officials announced Wednesday.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies stated from Goma that the UN World Food Programme, responsible for feeding some 800,000 refugees, can only cover 48 percent of needs in the next six months for lack of funds.
A representative of the federation said the daily food ration of 1,900 kilo-calories per person, required under the standards of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has in some camps fallen to 600 kilo-calories a day.
The shortfall in food supplies has caused trouble in recent days from militants who have accused international organisations of wanting to starve the refugees into returning to their neighbouring central African country, the representative said.
Many refugees in the front line of those creating disturbances in the camps do not want to go home for fear of action against them by the new government in Kigali, dominated by the Tutsi ethnic minority and installed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which seized power last July after three months of ethnic carnage.
Almost all of the refugees around Goma come from Rwanda's Hutu majority. The RPF accuses Hutu former government troops and extremist militias of massacring between 500,000 and a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus after the death of Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana in a suspected rocket attack on his plane in April last year.
Some RPF troops are accused of summary executions and reprisals for the genocide. The UN Security Council has set up an international criminal tribunal to try those responsible for the massacres.
mf/nb/sayc AFP AFP
