Rwanda Rebels Plan Government, Reportedly OK Pact With French
Rwanda’s rebel commander said Tuesday that his Rwandan Patriotic Front will form a government within days, to be followed by a cease-fire.
French officers said France had won an endorsement from the rebels for a limited “humanitarian security zone” in southwestern Rwanda. The tentative agreement appeared to avert any immediate risk of a clash with the Tutsi-led rebels.
The rebels had disputed a broader French deployment, saying it would have effectively protected the retreating forces of the Hutu-declared interim Rwandan government.
At U.N. headquarters in New York, the rebels said they will ask for Rwanda’s U.N. seat as soon as the new government is named. Faustin Twagiramungu, a moderate Hutu who was appointed prime minister last year under an aborted peace agreement, will be the new government’s prime minister, said Claude Dusaidi, an envoy to the United Nations for the rebels.
In the capital, Kigali, which the rebels took Monday, Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame said the government would include many people from opposition parties and would be guided by the principles of last year’s aborted multiparty peace agreement.
Refugees crowded Gikongoro on Tuesday. French troops found three new camps in the area, raising the number of refugees there to 300,000.
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