Citation
KIGALI, April 9 (Reuter) - A crisis committee in Rwanda named an
interim administration in the bloodied central African country on
Saturday and the capital Kigali experienced its first sustained period
of calm in three days.
Sporadic gunfire rocked the city overnight but residents said this
eased at dawn -- when a U.N.-brokered ceasefire was expected to come
into operation.
One resident spoke of dozens of corpses littering the streets alongside
wounded people, who lay there bleeding with no-one to attend to them.
It was pathetic, really. Just death and lonely suffering. We've never
seen anything like this before,
the resident said.
The bloodletting, which followed Wednesday's rocket attack killing of
President Juvenal Habyarimana and his counterpart from neighbouring
Burundi, pitted members of the majority Hutu tribe against the minority
Tutsi, the former feudal overlords.
Troops from the presidential guard, loyal to Habyarimana, a Hutu, still
patrolled the streets and many residents were barricaded in their own
homes, fearing widespread killings.
We've heard reports of a ceasefire, but no one is certain of anything
here. I doubt it will hold,
the resident said.
Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu serving in a four-party
coalition with Habyarimana, was killed by soldiers on Thursday and
three ministers were kidnapped.
Parliament speaker Venat Sindikubwabo announced in a broadcast on state
radio on Saturday he had taken power as interim president after
consultations with other political groups.
He said his new government only wanted to restore order.
Rwanda and Burundi have a bloody history of tribal rivalry. Tens of
thousands of members of both tribes have died in recurring bouts of
ethnic bloodletting.
Relief workers said Burundi, where up to 50,000 people died in violence
following the October assassination of that country's first
democratically elected Hutu president, was calm.
Sindikubwabo said he also wanted to contact the Tutsi-dominated rebel
Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF).
RPF forces have fought fierce battles with the presidential guard over
the last two days. They have had 600 fighters in Kigali since talks
began on setting up a transitional government under a peace accord
reached in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha last August.
Sindikubwabo named a six-member cabinet including Jean Kambanda as
prime minister. He did not say when they would be sworn in.
Rwandan political experts said Sindikubwabo and his new team were all
hardline members of the Hutu tribe and close allies of Habyarimana.
They are anti-Tutsi (the minority tribe), we cannot see cooperation
between them and the RPF,
one said
Sindikubwabo said his other main priorities were to resettle refugees
and try to get food to famished people in the north.
Jean-Roger Booh Booh, special representative of the U.N.
secretary-general, appealed to the RPF and all government regiments to
end fighting and move to restore order.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
