Amid Chaos in Rwanda, U.S. Plans for Evacuation : Africa: U.N. peacekeepers negotiate partial truce after second day of bloodshed. French troops land in capital.

As bloody chaos engulfed Rwanda’s capital and fighting swirled around the residence of the American ambassador there, the Pentagon drafted plans Friday for an evacuation of Americans from the country if U.S. citizens are unable to leave.

The commander of U.N. peacekeeping troops apparently negotiated at least a partial truce between some of the warring parties in Rwanda. And, in a move that might help stabilize the Central African country and avert some of the bloodshed, the president of the Security Council said late Friday in New York that an interim government had been formed in Rwanda.

Neighboring Burundi, meantime, struggled--with apparent success--to head off a contagion of violence within its borders.

There were no reports of U.S. casualties in the second day of escalating violence in Rwanda, especially in its capital, Kigali.

But a State Department official said a mob of looters stormed the gates of a religious school run by U.S. missionaries outside the city, trapping an estimated 21 American citizens as well as other foreigners inside.

The missionaries, based in the town of Mudendi, were trying to negotiate with the crowd, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Prudence Bushnell said in a Washington briefing.

Bushnell said it did not appear that U.S. citizens, who number about 255 in Rwanda, are being targeted in the ethnic violence that erupted after the deaths of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents late Wednesday in an aircraft, reportedly shot down by ethnic rivals.

But concern for the safety of foreigners in the landlocked African country remained high.

Early today, the French Foreign Ministry announced that it has decided to send troops to Kigali to help prepare for a possible evacuation of French nationals.

U.N. officials and diplomats reported late Friday that three French planes had landed at Rwanda’s Kigali airport, apparently to evacuate foreigners, according to Reuters news service.

Diplomats calculated that each aircraft carried up to 50 soldiers, meaning the French force numbered about 150 people.

“It is a more encompassing operation than just evacuating the French citizens,” one diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On Friday, Belgium, Britain and the United States also huddled to discuss the possibility of pulling out their citizens.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary William J. Perry, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and White House National Security Adviser Anthony Lake met with Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and senior military advisers to discuss possible plans for an evacuation operation.

A senior Clinton Administration official said the Pentagon had been asked to begin drafting plans to allow evacuations of Americans and other foreigners, possibly in cooperation with several European allies.

The official said the plans must take into account the extremely uncertain course of events in Rwanda, including the possibility that a cease-fire could provide a break, during which an orderly departure of foreigners could proceed.

“We’ve committed ourselves to try to help (foreigners) leave, but it has to be safe and we’re still in discussions as to how to proceed,” said an Administration official late Friday.

President Clinton said in a stop in Minneapolis that he had spoken about the situation with Christopher and Perry and asked them to review options to respond to the crisis. “There are a sizable number of Americans there,” Clinton said, adding that he wanted to reassure their families that the U.S. government is doing everything it can to help them.

A Pentagon official warned that a military evacuation of foreigners from Rwanda would be “tricky.” The country would be difficult to reach with Marines--the U.S. forces most vigorously trained for evacuations. Guns are everywhere, the official said, and the threat of random violence has made it extremely dangerous for foreigners to leave their homes. Further, while foreigners are concentrated in Kigali, missionary and humanitarian outposts are scattered throughout Rwanda.

An evacuation probably would involve transport jets and helicopters staging operations from a friendly, nearby country such as Kenya or Burundi. U.S. forces conducting humanitarian operations in Somalia operated extensively through Kenya’s cities of Mombasa and Nairobi.

Pentagon officials also said that about 2,200 Marines are still sailing off the coast of Somalia. In Mombasa, the Marines still have four KC-130 refueling aircraft, sometimes used as transport planes, and four CH-53 helicopters, also used for troop transport. If a rescue is required on extremely short notice, such planes could be used.

A Belgian army paratroop unit was put on alert as prospects increased that Belgium, along with France and Britain, might have to rescue its citizens in Rwanda and Burundi.

Belgium’s national airline, Sabena, reportedly dispatched one of its fleet of Boeing 737s from Brussels to the Burundian capital of Bujumbura to aid in a possible evacuation.

The unfolding violence appears to be a three-sided tribal war pitting well-armed members of the Hutu-dominated presidential guard unit against followers of the mainly Tutsi resistance movement known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Units of the Rwandan army, meanwhile, are fighting both and are being attacked by both.

The Tutsis had been repatriated into the capital as part of a fragile peace agreement forged last August. That accord had brought a lull in the horrific cycle of ethnic violence between the country’s Hutu majority and its minority Tutsis. Bloody massacres between the two groups have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives since Rwanda and Burundi won independence from Belgium in 1962.

At the United Nations, discussions were conducted to consider expanding the mandate of the U.N. troops in Rwanda to provide protection, Bushnell said at the State Department.

In Kigali, David Rawson, the U.S. ambassador, and about 200 Rwandans who have sought refuge in his residence are relying for protection on five U.N. troops and the promises of the Hutu-dominated Rwandan military to ensure the safety of foreign diplomats.

The 2,500-member U.N. peacekeeping force has orders to shoot only when fired upon. U.S. officials said that they would seek to change the guidelines.

After an emergency Cabinet meeting in Brussels on Friday afternoon, the Belgian government asked U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to provide immediate reinforcements of the peacekeeping force deployed in Rwanda.

About 430 of the U.N. peacekeepers are Belgian, and at least 10 were killed Thursday as they tried unsuccessfully to protect Rwanda’s prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who also was killed in the incident. Uwilingiyimana, one of black Africa’s first female heads of government and a member of the Tutsi tribe, was pulled away from the U.N. peacekeepers and shot as they tried to shield her from the violence.

Belgian television quoted Red Cross officials as claiming that about 1,000 people had died since violence erupted in the country Wednesday. Other officials said an accurate death toll was impossible to calculate.

On Friday evening, a senior Belgian army officer, Col. Freddy van de Weghe, gave a compelling account of how the peacekeepers died. “Our soldiers were taken as they tried to protect the prime minister as she was fleeing,” he told a national television audience. “They were disarmed, taken to Kigali Camp in the city center and executed.”

Among the other presumed casualties is Monique Mujawamaliya, a human rights activist based in Kigali who disappeared Thursday after telling U.S.-based human rights workers that she was being hunted by members of the Rwandan presidential guard. Mujawamaliya, who has been a crusader across Africa for human rights and a vocal critic of tribal and ethnic violence, met in Washington with Clinton last December.

“If she is still alive, I’m sure she’s keeping it a secret,” said Susan Osnos of the Human Rights Watch in New York. “She’d been threatened many times previously.”

So far, however, executions like those described by the Belgian colonel have been the exception rather than the rule in the spiraling violence in Rwanda and have prompted officials such as Bushnell to say that foreigners may be spared.

On Thursday, for instance, 19 Rwandans, including eight Catholic priests, were killed at the Christ Spiritual Center in Kigali, where Jesuit activists were working for national reconciliation between Tutsis and Hutus.

Robert W. McChesney, director of the U.S. Jesuit Conference’s international office, said that at least seven Europeans, including three Belgian priests, were taken into another building while presidential guard units slaughtered the 19 Rwandans. The Belgians were later freed and reported the murders to Jesuit authorities. “Very clearly, the foreigners were spared in this case,” McChesney said.

Healy reported from Washington and Marshall from Brussels. Isabelle Maelcamp of The Times’ Brussels Bureau and Sarah White of The Times’ Paris Bureau also contributed to this report.

Origins of an African Bloodbath

Rwanda is one of the smallest, poorest and most crowded African nations. It has suffered from a civil war along tribal lines for years.

Rwanda Fact Sheet

Population: 8 million

Capital: Kigali

Government: President, who is directly elected, serves as head of state.

Life expectancy: 51 years

Literacy rate: 50%

Area: 10,169 square miles

Economy: 93% OF output based on farming. Key crops: Coffee, tea, bananas and beans.

RWANDA VS. BURUNDI

Rwanda once formed the northern half of Ruanda-Urundi, a U.N. territory administered by Belgium. Burundi formed the southern half. In 1962, the two became independent nations.

TRIBAL TENSIONS

A vast majority of Rwanda’s people belong to the Hutu ethnic group. The Tutsi, another ethnic group, form less than 10% but dominated politically and economically for hundreds of years. In 1959, the Hutu rebelled and gained countrol. Many Tutsi fled to what is now Burundi and other nearby countries.

RECENT STRIFE

Rwanda has been torn by divisions among ruling Hutus over a peace accord that its leader, a Hutu, signed with rebels of the minority Tutsi tribe last year. President Juvenal Habyarimana, who took power in 1973, and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira died when a plane bringing them back from regional peace talks went down Wednesday, reportedly hit by a rocket.

Sources: ABC-Clio Inc., World Book, Times staff and wire reports