Citation
KIGALI, March 31 (AFP) - President Juvenal Habyarimana has announced his resignation from the chairmanship of Rwanda's formerly sole ruling party and declared that multi-party elections will be held.
Habyarimana said in a radio broadcast in the Kinyarwanda language late Tuesday that his decision would not mean an end to his activity in the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRNDD).
But the affairs of state should be separate from party activity, he declared, adding that Rwanda would enter a new transitional phase from April 16 following the signing of a peace accord with rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR).
Habyarimana said a new interim government must consider the three issues of organising general and "free elections", people displaced by war, and Rwandan refugees abroad.
He announced local, general and presidential elections, but gave no dates for the polls.
Rwandan Defence Minister James Gasana meanwhile said that the FPR had violated a ceasefire already agreed at ongoing peace talks in the Tanzanian town of Arusha.
He denounced the rebel occupation of a buffer zone set up in the northwestern Ruhengeri region and in the northeast, accusing guerrillas in civilian clothes of laying mines there, and called on the neutral foreign military observer group GOMN operating in Rwanda to move into the area.
more AFP AFP SEQN-0183
