Rwanda’s Government Flees in Fear of Rebels

Most of Rwanda’s government has fled its refuge south of the capital, fearing a rebel advance, diplomats said Sunday.

In Kigali itself, an offensive by the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front prompted the United Nations to suspend convoys taking trapped civilians to safety across the city’s front lines.

Diplomats said most government ministers and senior officials left their headquarters, a former civil servants’ college, near Gitarama, 25 miles south of Kigali.

The ministers and officials fled Saturday by road and helicopter to the government-held western city of Kibuye on the shores of Lake Kivu facing eastern Zaire.

“Most of the government has gone to Kibuye, and others are already abroad,” a diplomat said, adding that the main rebel thrust appeared to be moving on Gitarama to force the rest of the government out.

A rebel officer said taking the largely deserted capital of Kigali was no longer a top priority.

“What would we have if we took the rest of the city? Just a few monuments, buildings,” he said.

The self-declared government--set up after the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart in a mysterious plane crash April 6--fled from Kigali to Gitarama about a week later to escape the massacres and war ignited by Habyarimana’s death.

The government is entirely from the majority Hutu tribe, which dominates the army and started an orgy of slaughter of the Tutsi minority and opponents by troops, militias and mobs.

Aid officials estimate between 200,000 and 500,000 people have been killed. More than 1.5 million people have fled across the small central African country’s borders, and hundreds of thousands more are homeless inside Rwanda.

Despite the rebels’ gains in Kigali and the south, U.N. officials said peace talks between rebel and army commanders were still scheduled to start at U.N. headquarters today.

The U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda called in representatives of both sides Sunday for talks on allowing its convoys to resume evacuating some of the 40,000 refugees in Kigali.