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MULINDI, Rwanda, April 8 (Reuter) - Rwandan rebel leader Paul Kagame said on Friday that if his troops march on the capital Kigali their only aim will be to restore order.
``There is absolute anarchy. No government, no authority. We have to move to restore order if this continues,'' Kagame said.
``We will have to intervene, swiftly move troops to Kigali, pin down the elements opposed to peace and negotiations and implement a peace accord we reached last year,'' he told Reuters at a rebel outpost 70 km (50 miles) northeast of the capital.
His Rwandan Patriotic Front, which launched a civil war by invading from Uganda in 1990, controls an area of northern Rwanda. Some of its troops are within a day's march of Kigali.
The RPF also has a contingent of 600 rebels stationed in Kigali's parliament buildings under an agreement signed last year in Arusha, Tanzania.
The regular army stands between the capital and the main rebel force on ceasefire lines established during drawn-out peace talks.
The rebels belong mainly to the minority Tutsi tribe.
Their kinfolk in the capital seem to have been largely on the receiving end in an ethnic bloodbath which erupted when President Juvenal Habyarimana, a member of the majority Hutu, died in a plane shot down on Wednesday.
Two days of mayhem have followed in which Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu, a group of Belgian U.N. peacekeepers, priests, nuns, aid workers and unknown numbers of civilians have been slaughtered.
Foreigners in the capital have blamed much of the killing on Habyarimana's palace guard.
Rwanda's warlike Tutsi lost out in tribal battles three decades ago and the country has since been ruled by the Hutu, whom they had traditionally dominated.
Rebel grievances included Habyarimana's refusal to let Tutsi refugees return home and his slowness in implementing a peace agreement giving them a greater role in political life.
The 600 rebels at Kigali's parliament buildings are reported to have been involved in the mayhem in the capital, battling the presidential guard, although the rebel leader said he had word only of three men wounded.
Kagame blamed the presidential guard for the slaughter in Kigali, saying that marauding soldiers and youths rampaging and looting would be contained if the guards acted.
Another RPF official, Emmanuel Ndahira, said RPF troops were holding their ground but reinforcements had been considered.
He said that the RPF was only interested in restoring peace and wanted other political groups to move fast to try to rescue a peace agreement
Ndahira denied the RPF was responsible for the rocket attack on the presidential plane, which also killed President Cyprien Ntaryamira of neighbouring Burundi.
Kagame said the RPF hoped Habyarimana's death would not prevent the installation of transitional institutions, which has been postponed five times since last December.
Under the Arusha agreement, the supreme court chairman may summon the leadership of the ruling party and ask them for a successor if an incumbent president dies.
The chairman then may go ahead and swear in the transitional government, headed by a prime minister, and who must be a member of an opposition party.
Both the supreme court chairman and the designated transitional prime minister went into hiding on Thursday.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
