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KIGALI, June 24 (AFP) - The Rwandan government has postponed Thursday's signing of a peace pact it reached at the weekend with the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR), a government spokesman said here.
Foreign Minister Boniface Ngulinzira, the chief government negotiator, was to brief President Juvenal Habyarimana and other political leaders before the accord could be signed, the spokesman told official radio Wednesday.
Ngulinzira has led Kigali's team at peace talks in the Tanzanian town of Arusha. An agreement to bring the minority Tutsi rebels into government has not been welcomed by political extremists in Rwanda's Hutu majority.
The foreign minister has been expected here for several days following the conclusion of 11 months of peace talks.
A new date for signing the accord, aimed at ending a civil war that begun with an incursion led by exiled Tutsis of the FPR in October 1990, will be decided in consultation with Tanzania's President Ali Hassan Mwinyi, who was instrumental in bringing about the peace pact, the spokesman said.
In a meeting Tuesday, the government turned down the candidacy of interim Prime Minister Dismas Nsengiyaremye to head a new enlarged government that would include members of the FPR under the Arusha accords.
The agreement provides for the incoming premier to be drawn from the ranks of the Democratic Republican Movement (MDR), the main opposition party, of which Nsengiyaremye is a member.
The peace accords also include agreements on the repatriation of refugees and resettlement of displaced people and the formation of a joint army. The northern Rwandan town of Byumba will serve as the capital during the transitional period.
The transition will be supervised by a neutral international force under the auspices of the United Nations. The U.N. force will replace the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) military observer group that has overseen a ceasefire since last August.
Habyarimana, Rwanda's formerly military ruler, was forced in April 1992 to appoint Nsengiyaremye to head a transitional team including opponents of his ex-sole legal party, now named the National Republican Movement for Democracy (MNRD).
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