Citation
NAIROBI, April 16 (Reuter) - Representatives of the Rwandan army and
rebel forces have held their first face-to-face meeting to explore
terms for a ceasefire while fighting still raged for control of the
capital Kigali, the U.N. said on Saturday.
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) said officers from the
army and the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) met at a secret
location after a week of ethnic bloodletting between the majority Hutu
and minority Tutsi tribes.
The meeting was arranged by the U.N. Secretary-General's special
representative Jacques-Roger Booh Booh and held behind closed doors. It
explored conditions for a total ceasefire,
UNAMIR said in a statement
sent to Reuters in Nairobi.
There was no immediate word whether the meeting made progress. The RPF,
which draws its support mainly from Tutsis, has previously said it
could not discuss an end to fighting with a clique of murderers
.
UNAMIR said the meeting was held on Friday but did not say whether Booh
Booh, based in neighbouring Burundi, attended.
A French television station reported Kigali airport had fallen to RPF
forces early on Saturday but the Belgian military and the UNAMIR office
in New York denied that.
The U.N., Belgian and French forces are still in control at the
airport. Nothing has changed,
said a UNAMIR spokesman.
In a radio broadcast, the RPF made an appeal for aid for thousands of
Rwandans taking refuge in areas under its control.
Thousands of people are now taking refuge in RPF-controlled areas and
the RPF calls upon humanitarian organisations to provide emergency aid,
especially food, shelter and medicine,
the RPF rebel radio Muhabura
said.
Overnight, fighting raged at key points of Kigali where thousands of
people have died, but U.N. officials said that despite a week of
fighting, neither the army nor the rebels seemed in control of the
city.
About 3,600 rebels have infiltrated the city but government troops,
including men of the presidential guard, were still resisting fiercely,
UNAMIR officials said.
In New York on Friday, the Security Council said the main priority in
Rwanda was establishing a ceasefire.
Council members demand that the parties agree to an immediate
ceasefire and return to the negotiating table,
said a statement by
council President Colin Keating of New Zealand.
The U.N. made no decision on the future of the 2,500-strong UNAMIR, set
up last year to help implement a peace pact signed last August in
Tanzania aimed at ending a three-year civil war.
Belgium said it was withdrawing its 420-strong force from the U.N. team
and said peacekeepers should leave Rwanda because of the brutal
rupture
in the peace and democracy process.
Ten Belgian U.N. peacekeepers were among the thousands of people
butchered in a week of slaughter in Rwanda.
The largest remaining U.N. contingents are from Bangladesh, with about
940 soldiers, and Ghana, with some 840. About 20 other countries
provide smaller numbers.
Fighting erupted with new intensity last week after Rwandan President
Juvenal Habyarimana and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi were
killed when their plane was hit by rockets as it landed at Kigali.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
