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BRUSSELS, March 9 (AFP) - Belgium's Foreign Minister Willy Claes has called for a joint European Community approach to Rwanda following reports of inter-tribal fighting there, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.
The EC would express "western concern with the events in Rwanda and would call on Rwandan authorities to urgently intervene to prevent the escalation of violence," the ministry communique said.
Claes has asked Belgium's Ambassador in Kigali, Johan Swinnen, to report on recent ethnic violence which, according to official sources, has left at least 20 dead over the past few days.
Tribal clashes have claimed "dozens of lives" in southeast Rwanda's Bugesera region, where the government has imposed emergency measures, local sources reached by telephone from Nairobi said Monday.
Fires raged Sunday around a Roman Catholic mission at Nyamata, where more than 6,000 of the minority Tutsi tribe took refuge after fleeing their homes in the hills of the small east central African nation, an eyewitness said.
The majority Hutu government Sunday banned all meetings of more than three people in the region, imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew and began patrols by troops and gendarmes.
jh/fc/ew AFP AFP SEQN-0319
