Citation
ARUSHA, Tanzania, July 13 (AFP) - A truce agreed by the Rwandan government and rebels raised peace hopes, but last-minute haggling delayed signature of an accord Monday as talks went into an unscheduled fourth day, delegates said.
The Tanzanian-mediated talks between the the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the government, which took place amid an upsurge in fighting, were to have closed Sunday.
The two sides had planned to sign an accord at midnight in an effort to halt the 21-month guerrilla war which has uprooted a quarter of a million people from their homes.
"New differences on wording delayed the signing," a Tanzanian Foreign Ministry official said, though he stressed that the disagreements were "minor" and the truce was expected to be formally endorsed later Monday.
After tough bargaining behind closed doors over the weekend, the two sides agreed to a truce to take effect next Sunday and to open further negotiations on August 10 on a comprehensive peace plan for the tiny central African country.
They also agreed that the truce would be monitored by military observers from Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe, and government and rebel representatives.
Details of the deal were still being finalised early Monday afternoon by the chief RPF delegate Pasteur Bizimungu and Rwandan Foreign Minister Boniface Ngulinzira.
Next month's talks are to be supervised by a commission including officials of Rwanda's former colonial ruler Belgium, and representatives of the United States, France, Zaire, Uganda and Burundi.
Since the RPF invaded from neighbouring Uganda in October 1990, mortar attacks and lightning guerrilla strikes have driven an estimated 250,000 villagers from their homes in northern Rwanda's hill country.
Neither side has achieved a breakthrough, while impoverished Rwanda's economy has been wrecked.
more AFP AFP SEQN-0143
