Citation
BRUSSELS, April 17 (Reuter) - Belgium's 420 United Nations peacekeepers
in Rwanda can start withdrawing from the country from Tuesday, a
Belgian armed forces spokesman said on Sunday.
In principle they can start leaving from Tuesday,
the spokesman told
Reuters.
The Belgian troops in Rwanda, gripped by savage fighting between
soldiers and rebels and unabated killing of civilians, would be
relieved on Monday by peacekeepers from Ghana.
Tomorrow the airport (of Kigali) will be handed over to their Ghanaian
colleagues,
the spokesman said.
The spokesman said the option had been taken to leave Kigali airport
overland with a convoy of about 150 vehicles.
Belgian Foreign Minister Willy Claes said there was a danger that the
airport runway could be destroyed during fighting between government
and rebel forces with modern artillery.
The airport and certainly the runway could be seriously damaged, so
quite a lot of troops could become trapped like rats in a net,
Claes
told Belgian BRTN television.
The foreign minister also said he believed this month's assassination
of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was part of a well-prepared
plan.
What strikes me... in a country where one is not organised in such an
exemplary way, is that all access roads to the airport were closed off
10 minutes after the accident and that the massacres started more than
100 kilometres from Kigali less than one hour after the downing of the
plane,
Claes said.
If you also see the fairly systematic way in which members of the
opposition and moderates were massacred, I cannot get rid of the
impression that the downing of the plane was point number one of a
well-prepared plan,
he told BRTN television.
Habyarimana and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of neighbouring Burundi
were killed on April 6 when a rocket hit their plane as they were
returning from regional peace talks in Tanzania.
Claes said he believed a small group of extremist Hutus, who form the
majority in Rwanda, had an interest in preventing the Arusha peace
agreement from being signed.
The Arusha accord, signed last August, was to end a three-year civil
war between the then government, formed by the majority Hutu ethnic
group, and the Rwandese Patriotic Front, including many Tutsi exiles
who came in from neighbouring Uganda.
The United Nations says it is still unclear who killed the two
presidents. Belgium has requested a U.N. investigation.
Part of the Hutus, who form the majority in Rwanda, believe the
Belgians, who had 430 U.N. peacekeepers in Kigali when the plane was
shot down, were involved in the assassination of Habyarimana. Belgium
has denied the accusations.
Ten Belgian U.N. peacekeepers and six Belgian civilians were killed as
an orgy of bloodletting swept the Rwandan capital after the president's
death.
The armed forces spokesman said the peacekeepers' trip out might take
several days and would probably go towards Tanzania.
About 100 mostly European civilians, waiting at the airport for
evacuation, would be flown out of Kigali to the Kenyan capital Nairobi
and not accompany the peacekeepers, he said.
Belgium's paratroopers in Nairobi, who evacuated Belgian nationals and
other foreigners earlier this month, would probably start returning
home from Monday, he said.
About 750 Belgian paratroops took part in the evacuation in Rwanda.
Another 200 were on standby in Nairobi.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
