Citation
France calls on Rwandan rebels to talk, envisages peacekeepers
afpr000020011028dq5502i86
572 Mots
05 Mai 1994
Agence France-Presse
Anglais
(Copyright 1994)
PARIS, May 5 (AFP) - The French government on Thursday condemned
Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels for rejecting talks with the
Kigali government and a ceasefire to end ethnic slaughter in the
central African country.
France is "concerned" at the failure of a UN peace bid in Arusha,
Tanzania, and "deplores the RPF's refusal not only to enter talks with
the other party but above all to envisage an end to fighting," foreign
ministry spokesman Richard Duque said.
The government "reiterates its support" for peace initiatives in the
region, particularly that of Tanzania, and calls on the "actors on the
Rwandan stage to face up to their responsibilities" and "end the
massacres," he said.
Heavy fighting raged on Thursday in Kigali between the rebels and
government troops after a month of ethnic slaughter among the minority
Tutsis and the Hutu majority which has claimed more than 100,000 lives.
The United Nations suspended flights to the capital after a mortar
round hit the airport, preventing a relief plane from unloading and the
aircraft came under small arms fire in an apparent deliberate attack,
according to a senior UN official in Kigali.
France favours maintaining an international presence through the UN
Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), Duque stressed.
UNAMIR deployed to oversee implementation of a peace accord signed
between the mainly Hutu government and the Tutsi-backed RPF in Arusha
last August. Its numbers were cut back from 2,500 to just 270 after
renewed bloodletting broke out after the Rwandan president, Juvenal
Habyarimana, was killed on April 6, when his plane was downed
apparently in a rocket attack.
In Arusha, the RPF has said it will talk to the Rwandan military but
not to what it described as a "government of killers" formed two days
after the death of the head of state.
Paris has asked its ambassador in Kigali, Jean-Michel Marlaud, to
contact all the Rwandan parties and regional leaders concerned in an
"evaluation and contact mission" to help solve the crisis.
"The sending of an international force to Rwanda can only be effective
if a ceasefire is concluded among the parties and iy they begin to
talk," Duque said.
He added that consultations were currently under way at the United
Nations in New York, where France has been pressing for international
intervention.
On Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told parliament: "At
this very moment, at the Security Council where France is active, we
are up against strong reservations from many of our partners over
sending a United Nations force."
"The preference seems to be going in that respect to the OAU
(Organisation of African Unity)," Juppe added.
The United States, unwilling to renew its experience in sending troops
to Somalia, has indicated that it will help fund African military
intervention on the lines of the Nigerian-led ECOMOG force operating in
Liberia.
In private in Paris, however, some French officials said that ECOMOG
had not proved very successful and charged that the multi-national
force had failed to remain neutral in the Liberian civil war. A
Liberian peace deal was signed last August and elections are due to be
held this year.
France has released 10 million francs (1.8 million dollars) in aid for
the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled the carnage in
Rwanda, mainly to neighbouring Tanzania, Duque said.
