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UNITED NATIONS, April 9 (AFP) - Rebel forces in Rwanda will attack any foreign troops remaining in that nation beyond the time it takes them to evacuate foreigners, a rebel spokesman warned here Saturday.
Claude Dusaidi, a spokesman for the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in New York, said three RPF columns were heading toward the Rwandan capital, Kigali, to attack Rwandan army forces and to deal with foreign troops.
Foreign troops will be "allowed for as long as to take their people," Dusaidi said. "If they stay longer for any other mission that is not humanitarian, we shall take them as hostile forces and we shall engage them in combat."
Security Council members also arrived here in New York Saturday for urgent consultations on international military operations in Rwanda to rescue foreigners caught in tribal warfare.
France called the informal meeting to explain the military operations and assure members that its efforts are purely humanitarian and for the evacuation of it citizens.
Hundreds of French, Belgian and American troops have been dispatched to the central African nation and neighboring countries in an effort to evacuate their citizens.
In Brussels, a Belgian Defense Ministry spokesman said Saturday that Rwandan army units have blocked the runway of the Kigali airport, raising doubts about the mission of 800 Belgian paratroopers bound for Rwanda.
Elements of the Rwandan presidential guard at Kigali airport had ordered vehicles onto the runway on Friday so that aircraft could not land, spokesman Colonel Freddy Van Deweghe said.
He said they removed the vehicles to permit the landing of aircraft carrying 300 French troops in the early hours of Saturday, then blocked off the runway again afterwards.
