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NAIROBI, April 22 (Reuter) - Rebel reinforcements advanced towards the
besieged Rwandan capital and a threadbare U.N. mission hoped for a
truce to end the country's slaughter.
Sporadic fighting between rebels of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF)
and government units continued in the morning, the commander of a
scaled-down United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR),
Brigadier-General Romeo Dallaire, told Reuters.
There is lots of sporadic firing going on around Kigali. It looks like
the government and RPF are fighting it out,
Dallaire said in a phone
interview from Kigali.
Dallaire, a Canadian, said a column of fresh rebel forces had pierced
the captured town of Rwamagana, about 25 miles to the east and was now
advancing on Kigali.
They are moving from Rwamagana...they are moving westwards onto
Kigali,
he said, adding it would be premature at the moment to say
who will take the day
.
The Red Cross says tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people
have been killed in a tribal bloodbath between majority Hutus and
minority Tutsis that began two weeks ago after the presidents of Rwanda
and neighbouring Burundi, both Hutus, were killed in a rocket attack on
their plane.
Dallaire, whose forces are to be reduced to 270 troops under a new U.N.
order, said he hoped a ceasefire between the two sides could be
arranged at peace talks in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha on
Saturday. But he said he was unaware of who would attend from the
government side.
The rebels have agreed to attend the talks to be chaired by Tanzanian
President Ali Hassan Mwinyi but they insist they will only talk to the
Rwandan army and not members of an interim government which fled Kigali
last week.
There will be no negotiation with the interim government. This
government has not respected the peace agreement, which is the basic
law ruling our country today,
Faustin Twagiramungu, Rwanda's
prime-minister designate, said in a radio interview monitored in
Nairobi.
He was referring to a peace pact brokered between the RPF and the
government of the late Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, killed
along with Burundi's leader Cyprien Ntaryamira in the attack on their
plane on April 6.
Dallaire said massacres had continued unabated in the southern town of
Butare. It is important that a ceasefire is worked out so that we can
focus our attention on helping the people of Rwanda,
he said. He said
UNAMIR will now concentrate on the humanitarian aspects.
On Thursday, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution reducing
the U.N. force, once numbering 2,500, to a bare minimum of 270 military
and civilian personnel.
Dallaire said up to 1,000 military personnel would be kept in the
Kenyan capital Nairobi, ready to be flown back to Kigali once a
ceasefire was worked out.
A U.N. emergency team is expected to fly to the capital at the weekend
to assess humanitarian needs there and in outlying areas, a U.N.
spokesman said.
Speaking in Geneva, the spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) told Reuters that about 90,000 people have fled Rwanda
for four neighbouring countries, nearly doubling the number in just two
days.
The UNHCR said the new figure of 90,000 refugees included 50,000
citizens of Burundi who have returned to their homeland since killings
erupted in Rwanda after Habyarimana was killed.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
