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NAIROBI, Jan 7 (AFP) - Leaders from seven African nations meeting here Saturday called for setting up an international court for Rwanda, urged the creation of "safe corridors" for returning refugees and called on the Rwandan government to work harder for reconciliation.
The presidents of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia and the prime minister of Zaire agreed a brief statement after their close-door meeting which notably called backed the idea of setting up an international tribunal to try those responsible for the April to June massacres in Rwanda.
Up to a million people are thought to have been killed between April and June last year in Rwanda and hundreds of thousands more displaced both within and outside the country.
The joint communique also urged the creation of "safe corridors" from the refugee camps to the Rwandan border and through into the country.
They also supported the "separation of the suspected perpetrators of the genocide from innocent refugees," within the camps.
A member of the Rwandan delegation said the most controversy was over how to bring about national reconciliation.
"The question that should be uppermost in our minds is how to prevent such a catastrophe as was witnessed last year from repeating itself," Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi said in his welcoming address as leaders and their foreign ministers gathered at the Presidential Palace for the one-day summit.
Delegates said the glaring absence of Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, the only head of state to stay away from Nairobi, detracted from the summit.
Zaire, which was represented by his Prime Minister Kengo Wa Dondo, shelters hundreds of thousands of Zairean refugees among whom are numbered thousands of former army soldiers and militia fighters.
"The questions that will be asked need Mobutu's personal response," one unnamed delegate told Kenya's The Nation newspaper before the meeting.
Rwandan president Pasteur Bizimungu, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya of Burundi, Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, Ali Hassan Mwinyi of Tanzania and Frederick Chiluba of Zambia all joined their host arap Moi for the summit in his presidential palace.
The UN Secretary General's special representative in Kigali, Shaharyar Khan, was an observer at the summit.
Arap Moi said some five million Rwandan refugees were affected by the war in Rwanda, two million of whom are based in neighbouring countries.
"It is only through a genuine process of national reconciliation that a cycle of violence in our sister state can be avoided," he warned at the summit opening.
at/pcj/fc AFP AFP
