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KIGALI, Sept 8 (AFP) - Most of the 780 Rwandan and Burundian refugees who were ordered expelled last week by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will be repatriated on Monday, the UN refugee agency said.
Most of the Burundians will go home in buses provided by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), spokesman Paul Stromberg told AFP, while some 500 Rwandans who were airlifted to Rwanda last week were at a transit camp near Kigali.
The refugees were expelled after soldiers surrounded their camp near the northern city of Kisangani last Thursday.
The move prompted UNHCR chief Sadako Ogata to condemn a "blatant breach" of international conventions and call for a review of her agency's operations in the former Zaire.
According to an expert on the Great Lakes region, the expulsions may be linked to a UN investigation into alleged massacres of thousands of refugees in which President Laurent Kabila's forces have been implicated.
The expert suggested that the DRC wanted to avoid the refugees' questioning by investigators, whose work has been stalled the past two weeks because of renewed objections by the DRC government.
However UN chief Kofi Annan said Monday he had received assurances from Kabila that the mission would be allowed to proceed.
Several tens of thousands of Rwandans and Burundians who initially fled ethnic bloodletting in their own countries have been missing in the former Zaire since Kabila's rebellion started a year ago, prompting the flight of refugees -- either homeward, or further inside the DRC.
At least 200 of the 318 Burundians expelled last week will go home Monday, Stromberg said, adding: "They are all volunteers and will be taken to one of the areas of Burundi that is considered safe."
He said the 457 Rwandans who were expelled are at a transit camp in Runda, a few kilometers (miles) east of Kigali. Seventy of them were still awaiting identity checks, while one has been arrested, Stromberg said.
All had fled murderous attacks in April on camps sheltering some 80,000 refugees in the area around Kisangani.
The UNHCR said the Burundians who refuse to go home will be transferred to a camp in southern Rwanda where other Burundian refugees are staying.
More than 1,300 people were repatriated from this camp to Burundi last week, Stromberg said.
Last month Gabon expelled 168 Rwandan refugees despite UNHCR protests.
UNHCR spokeswoman Pamela O'Toole said in Geneva last Friday that Ogata planned in an address to the UN Security Council to launch an urgent call to solve the growing refugee crisis in the DRC.
She is in constant contact with Annan and is still trying to convene an extraordinary meeting of the Organisation of African Unity.
"There is a great need for an intensive focus on what is an absolutely appalling situation for refugees across the Great Lakes region," O'Toole said.
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