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REBELS of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) yesterday took control of
Kigali, the country's capital, and Butare, its second largest city. The
rebels now control at least 75% of the country and are likely to set up
an interim administration and seek international recognition.
The assaults on the two centres drove out tens of thousands of
civilians and soldiers. With the fall of the two main cities, an
estimated 50,000 people, including thousands of Tutsi who have been in
hiding to escape massacre, will be able to venture out without fear.
However, French forces, originally charged with protecting and
evacuating civilians, have now been ordered to stop the westward
advance of the rebels and to set up a humanitarian safe haven
. French
helicopters flew relays to the southwestern town of Gikongoro as
Operation Turquoise
was put on a war footing to meet the RPF.
The westward push by the rebels has made progress every day recently,
and they are now less than ten miles from where the advance parties of
French troops are encamped in Gikongoro, 18 miles west of Butare.
The new hardened French attitude to the rebels marks a big departure
from the government's initial pledge to stay clear of the fighting. The
rebels have been warned to stay clear of the safe area around Gikongoro
and south of Lake Kivu, near the border with Zaire, or face the fire of
the French forces. Colonel Didier Thibaut, the local French commander,
said: We have the means, and soon we will have more ... if the RPF
comes here and threatens the population, we will fire on them without
hesitation.
Ordinary French soldiers are determined to carry out their orders, but
they cannot hide their anger at what they see as being left out on a
limb by the international community. Above all, they see Britain as
having failed to meet its responsibilities. A French corporal said:
The British know nothing about food and everything about war. Our
history teaches us to view them with respect in this matter, but we
cannot respect people who will not come and stand by our side when we
are sent on a mission to save lives.
The new French action is being taken as it becomes clear that the
Rwandan government, based at Gisenyi, on the border with Zaire, has
lost control of its battered army.
Last night in Paris, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, France's Chief of the
General Staff, said that the safe zone, which covers about a fifth of
Rwanda, was now in effect. No fighting would be permitted within it.
All sides, he said, had been asked to ensure that there is no
penetration by armed units
. Any French military intervention, he
emphasised, would take place to protect threatened civilians from
armed bands
.
The frontier of the French zone passed east of Gikongoro, Admiral
Lanxade said, adding: We have asked the RPF not to enter the zone and
we think they will comply.
Other defence officials said the appeal to
the RPF and to the Rwandan army to call a halt to the fighting in the
area around Gikongoro was being made by French diplomats directly or
through intermediaries.
The plan for a security zone has set Paris on a course of confrontation
with the rebels. From the outset, the RPF has depicted the French
mission as a colonial exercise intended to prop up the Kigali regime, a
long-standing client of Paris.
If the French create that zone, they are only protecting the Hutu army
and its killer militias,
James Rwego, the Brussels representative of
the rebel forcess, said.
Despite the new Paris hard line, French officials who, like their
troops, are bitter over the lack of support from African and European
states, insist that their troops' actions in Rwanda are designed to be
purely humanitarian. Despite the deteriorating situation and the
intensified fighting, we are resolutely continuing our humanitarian
operation,
a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Francois Leotard, the Defence Minister, yesterday complained about the
strange and painful impotence of Africa
in the Rwandan conflict. Why
should we not say that we are experiencing a sense of failure from the
weak African participation in a solution to the Rwandan crisis,
he
wrote in Le Monde. He also called on Europe to work with African states
to create a multi-national rapid-intervention force dedicated to
dealing with crises on the continent.
France expects to receive swift United Nations endorsement for its
humanitarian area. French troops, the government believes, will be
empowered by the UN to use force if necessary to prevent any military
infiltration into the area. With France's small but well-armed
intervention force faced with the possibility of all-out battle,
tension was running high in the Defence Ministry and the Foreign
Ministry yesterday. In just a short time, the French will have to
disarm the Hutu forces who dominate their safe zone, or appear in the
eyes of the Tutsi and the world as defenders of the routed government
side. There certainly appears little chance that French forces can be
withdrawn by July 31 as Edouard Balladur, the Prime Minister, promised
last month.
With the exception of the Communist Party, which opposed the French
intervention, public and media opinion remains firmly behind the
operation. Commentators continue to echo the official line that France
is engaged in an altruistic and thankless mission that deserved a
better reception from its allies.
Le Monde said there were only two choices now in Rwanda. Either the RPF
agreed to halt its advance, accepted the French safe zone and agreed to
the principle of a political solution to the war, or the French force
would have to leave, abandoning hundreds of thousands of Rwandans who
will be exposed to new extermination
.
