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BRUSSELS, June 2 (AFP) - Rwanda's legal opposition parties, already represented in government, and a guerrilla front have said President Juvenal Habyarimana must be "forced to leave", branding him an obstacle to peace.
The opposition and the armed rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) were agreed on their aims, they stated Monday after a four-day meeting in Brussels to prepare for a peace conference due to be held in Paris from Friday.
"We are fighting against a common enemy, but the methods used are not the same," they said in a joint communique.
"The only person opposed to peace is Habyarimana," Faustin Twagiramungu of the Democratic Republican Movement told a press conference. "In 19 months (of fighting), he has not presented a single viable peace plan".
All parties in Brussels accused the "terrorist regime" of retired General Habyarimana, who took power in 1975, of "seeking to destabilise the transitional government and above all to block the peace and democracy process".
Since March, a spate of unexplained bomb attacks has killed and wounded dozens of people in Rwanda. The opposition has accused the regime of seeking to spread "insecurity" and undermine the government of Dismas Nsengiyaremye, appointed to oversee the run-up to multiparty elections.
Hundreds more lives have been claimed in clashes between the majority Hutus and the Tutsi people, who were in the past traditional rulers of the small east African highland nation. The FPR, made up largely of longtime Tutsi exiles, first invaded Rwanda from Uganda in October 1990.
Twagiramungu jointly chaired the Brussels meeting with FPR president Alexis Kanyarengwe. Also represented were the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party, which are members of the coalition government in Kigali with the formerly sole, ruling National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development.
jh/nb/ns AFP AFP SEQN-0193
