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FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT GENEVA, JAN. 28
New projects to help refugees in Africa are being discussed at the special session of the executive committee of the United Nations High Commissioner's programme for refugees. The committee has been enlarged from 25 to 30 members, the additions being Algeria, Nigeria, Tanganyika, Lebanon and Madagascar.
Mr. Thomas Jamieson, director of the programme, reported to the committee on the visit he has just made to the Kivu province of the Congo, and to Burundi, where there has been a fresh influx of refugees from Rwanda. He told your Correspondent afterwards that in all eight centres he visited the refugees were working more diligently than they had been before and their communities were developing normally with schools and clinics. The area appeared calm. Although before going there he had heard that many of the 22,000 Tutsi refugees in the United Nations centres had taken part in an attack on Rwanda, he had ascertained that this was not true. It was only those tribesmen who had not been resettled and who were wandering about the country who had gone into Rwanda.
Killing exaggerated
In the past few weeks some 4,000 new refugees had moved into Burundi and 8.000. with 10,000 head of cattle, had sought refuge in Uganda. Both Governments had appealed to the High Commissioner for help in tackling this problem. He believed that reports of the extent of the massacre in Rwanda might perhaps be somewhat exaggerated even though it was certain that hundreds had been killed.
Reports were still confused and sometimes conflicted. Between 50 and 100 refugees, mostly women and children, were arriving daily at the United Nations High Commissioner's office at Usumburu.
In Geneva it is reported that the Rwanda Government informed the observer sent by the International Committee of the Red Cross that he would not be welcome. Two officials of United Nations agencies in Rwanda have resigned on the grounds that they can no longer work in a country which is practising genocide
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According to other reports reaching here, the original disturbances in Rwanda were touched off by agitators, some of whom had received training elsewhere. They had been provided with money and arms. These reports also say that Tutsi tribesmen are now being incited to employ guerrilla tactics in Rwanda and that European mercenaries are being held there with other prisoners including Congolese Army deserters.
