Citation
GOMA, Zaire, July 16 (AFP) - The retreating Rwandan government will remain in Cyangugu in the French safe zone and continue to operate from there, in defiance of French wishes, a cabinet minister told AFP Saturday.
Paris said Friday it did not want the Hutu government present in its southern Rwandan military base, as the safe zone was set up to help ordinary refugees.
France does not have the right to forbid the Rwandan authorities from being there, or anywhere else they want to establish themselves
in the country, Minister of Labour Jean de Dieu Habineza told AFP.
He said 13 of the 19 ministers were already in Cyangugu along with Prime Minister Jean Kambanda and parliament Speaker Theodore Sindikubwabo.
On Friday French military spokesman Jean Claude Perruchot confirmed the presence in the French zone of Sindikubwabo and three ministers.
Perruchot stressed that their presence could compromise the work of the international commission being set up to investigate the massacres that erupted in Rwanda after president Juvenal Habyarimana's death in a suspect plane crash on April 6, which has left between 500,000 and one million people dead.
Most of the dead were minority Tutsis, killed by majority Hutu militia.
As long as the guilt of members of government in this genocide is left unestablished by a neutral commission, the government will continue to be based in Cyangugu,
said Habineza, insisting that it wanted all light to be thrown on those responsible for the massacres.
A French military official in Goma said a meeting was expected Saturday between General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), and the chief of staff of the Rwandan government forces.
Government helicopters are flying regularly over their abandoned base in Gisenyi, he added.
The victorious rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which already controls most of the country, was advancing near Gisenyi on Saturday.
jg/sg AFP AFP
