Citation
BRUSSELS, April 18 (Reuter) - Belgian paratroops began arriving home on
Monday from Rwanda where they evacuated Westerners from the central
African country.
A defence ministry spokesman said 90 paratroopers arrived at Melsbroek
military airport outside Brussels and that a later flight would bring
in several dozen Belgian officers attached to the United Nations
mission in Rwanda.
Belgium's full contingent of about 420 U.N. troops in Rwanda would
start to withdraw fully from Tuesday, probably by road via Tanzania.
We have not made a decision yet whether it will be by road or air, but
by road seems to be the safest,
a military spokesman said.
Belgium announced its withdrawal from the U.N.'s Rwanda operation after
10 of its paratroops were killed while trying in vain to guard the
prime minister in an orgy of violence which erupted after President
Juvenal Habyarimana was killed in a rocket attack on a plane on April
6.
U.N. peacekeepers from Belgium, the former colonial power in Rwanda,
have been holding the airport in Rwanda's capital Kigali and will be
replaced there by about 800 Ghanaian soldiers.
About 200 Ghanaians have already arrived at the airport and we are
expecting a further 600 to be there later today,
a military spokesman
told Reuters.
He said the Belgian troops would withdraw most of their heavy
equipment, but would leave behind some material for the Ghanaian
troops.
The U.N. Security Council has not yet decided on the future of the
2,500-member U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), set up last
year to help implement an agreement signed in Arusha, Tanzania, aimed
at ending a three-year civil war.
U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has already said that the
Belgians' withdrawal was allowed.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
