Rebels Take Over Capital in Rwanda : Africa: France broadens role, threatens force if insurgents cross line. Actions could mark turning point in 3-month-old war.

Rebel troops overran Rwanda’s capital and consolidated their hold on its second-largest city Monday, prompting French forces to declare the shrinking government-held pocket in the southwest a safe area under French protection.

The advances by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels and France’s determination to protect the Hutu-led rump government in the southwest seemed to mark a turning point in the 3-month-old civil war, which has torn this small Central African nation apart and led to extensive tribal slaughter, leaving hundreds of thousands dead.

France previously had insisted that its 12-day-old military intervention would be strictly humanitarian, steering clear of the civil war that has raged since April 6.

But Col. Didier Thiebault, French commander in the south, announced at forward headquarters here Monday that he has ordered that if the rebel front “comes here and threatens the population, we will open fire against them without any hesitation.”

With the capital, Kigali, and the second-largest city, Butare, in their hands, the rebels control two-thirds of the country, mainly in the northeast and southeast.

Recent rapid rebel advances have left France with a choice of risking direct involvement in the war or withdrawing its troops farther west toward the border with Zaire, 95 miles from here.

To have done the latter, French officers argued, would have made a mockery of the humanitarian mission that France says is the reason for its involvement here.

Still, drawing a line around a large stretch of southwestern Rwanda and declaring it an inviolable humanitarian protection zone leaves France open to charges of once again propping up the reeling Rwandan army and the Hutu extremists responsible for much of the killing. In the early 1990s, French helicopters intervened decisively against the rebels to protect the regime of the late President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death in a suspicious plane crash April 6 sparked the latest round of bloodletting.

French officials insisted that their action in Rwanda is purely humanitarian. “Despite the deteriorating situation and the intensified fighting, we are resolutely continuing our humanitarian operation,” a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said. “We have taken the initiative of setting up a safe humanitarian zone in western Rwanda.”

Paris decided to go ahead with the zone without waiting for a formal green light from the U.N. Security Council president, expected today.

The rebels said they would ignore the French ultimatum.

In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and to the U.N. Security Council president, the rebels said French troops have no business in Rwanda and risked a confrontation.

“The so-called security zone which France proposes to establish is in effect really only a safe haven for the authors and perpetrators of the genocide,” wrote Gerald Gahima, the front’s special envoy to the United States and the United Nations.

The rebels urged the Security Council to facilitate the deployment of a proposed force from the Organization of African Unity and the immediate withdrawal of French forces.

The front is composed mostly of Tutsis, who make up only 14% of Rwanda’s population. Almost everyone else in the country is Hutu, including the bulk of the army.

White House spokesman Jeff Eller said, “The Administration continues to monitor French efforts in Rwanda” but had not yet had a chance to ask the French for details.

It was unclear Monday whether the fall of Kigali marked a major rout of government forces by the rebels or whether the government troops simply decided to stage a tactical withdrawal.

There were no reports of large numbers of government troops being killed or taken prisoner, and it appeared that most of the troops defending the capital had fled well ahead of the rebels’ entry.

There were only a few thousand people left in Kigali, most of them seeking shelter. Almost the entire population was dependent on relief food that comes in intermittently on two daily Canadian flights from Nairobi, Kenya.

The rebels’ arrival in Kigali freed more than 8,000 Tutsis who had been living in terror of government-trained Hutu militias.

A spokesman for the small U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rwanda said the rebels had overrun the Defense Ministry, army headquarters and Radio Rwanda, which had incited massacres of Tutsis by civilian militiamen with its broadcasts of ethnic hate messages.

“They were jubilant,” spokesman Maj. Jean-Guy Plante said of the Tutsi civilians freed from refuges in churches and a hotel.

Trying to avoid a confrontation, the French withdrew Sunday from Butare as rebels approached. But they vowed Monday to stand and fight if rebels attempt military action beyond Gikongoro, 15 miles west of Butare.

The French have jet fighter-bombers stationed 300 miles away in Kisangani in eastern Zaire to provide potential air support, but their decision still appeared fraught with pitfalls. There are fewer than 1,000 French soldiers inside Rwanda, armed with nothing heftier than heavy mortars, antitank missiles, helicopters and armored cars equipped with 90-millimeter cannon.

Refugees fleeing into Burundi or Zaire could pose serious problems for those countries, and even before Monday’s rebel advances, up to 100,000 Rwandans were reported heading toward Burundi.

Burundi, with the same ethnic mix as Rwanda, is undergoing an ethnic and political crisis as it prepares to choose a new president next Tuesday.

Zaire is already politically shaky. Thousands of Rwandans were reportedly massacred in ethnic clashes last year in areas bordering Rwanda.