Rwanda Refugees Urged to Go Home in Bid to Ease Crisis : Africa: The U.N. reverses its policy and offers to help repatriate more than a million Hutus. In Washington, Clinton orders ‘massive increase’ in U.S. aid.

Swamped by the dying, diseased and exhausted, the United Nations announced Friday that it would encourage and assist the voluntary repatriation, on foot, of more than 1 million Hutu refugees back to Tutsi-controlled Rwanda in hopes of lessening the humanitarian crisis here.

The decision was a major policy reversal for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which had insisted Rwanda was still a dangerous place after a civil war and 3 1/2 months of tribal slaughter.

The policy change, which came after U.N. officials received assurances from Rwandan rebel leaders that those returning would be safe, was unlikely to have an immediate effect on the flood of refugees who have overrun this border town and overwhelmed international relief agencies.

But aid officials said they hoped that the policy change would eventually encourage the refugees to begin their trek home, easing the catastrophic conditions here.

On Friday in Washington, President Clinton ordered an “immediate and massive increase” in U.S. assistance to Rwandan refugees, including a round-the-clock airlift of food, water and medicine to areas where the death toll from a widening epidemic of cholera and other highly contagious diseases has risen dramatically.

In Goma, Ray Wilkinson, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said his organization had confirmed nearly 3,000 deaths in the past three days. But that figure, he said, didn’t include hundreds who were collected and buried in mass graves by French army teams or countless others who have died in sprawling refugee camps that still are without adequate food, water or medicine.

The ravages of the fast-spreading epidemic, compounded by exhaustion and hunger, were everywhere amid the grim chaos here Friday. As the day wore on, hundreds of corpses were placed in dusty rows alongside the road. Bodies also crowded the few field clinics and lay across the black lava-strewn fields.

At a single clinic run by the Catholic diocese in downtown Goma, about 30 people died overnight from a refugee population of 10,000. “The normal death rate is 1 in 10,000,” said Isabelle Pardeau, a doctor at the clinic. “Two in 10,000 is severe. Ten is catastrophic. And here we had 30.”

Outside the foul-smelling clinic, a woman staggered by a stone wall. She took two steps, then leaned weakly against the wall. One more stumbling step and she collapsed, face down and lifeless in the sharp-edged rocks.

About 130 were dead by early morning just outside the town of Munigi, where several thousand sick people lay jammed together on reed mats, thin mattresses and bare rocks under the hot sun. Half a dozen doctors and nurses worked frantically to separate the dead from the living.

“These two people are dead,” an Irish nurse, Bernadette Feeney, shouted from the middle of the field. “They are dead. They must be removed.” A French doctor screamed and cursed in her radio nearby, “We need water! We need water now! Now!”

The six-tent field hospital finally received a container of clean water by late afternoon and enough intravenous drips to rehydrate the worst off. In most cases, a relative stood above the patient, holding a plastic bag with saline solution. But 50 more corpses had already appeared, and no food had arrived for the third day in a row.

At Munigi, the sickness was compounded by fear as Zairian army soldiers appeared overnight and tried to order the people to leave. Witnesses said the soldiers first fired automatic rifles into the air, then fired into the crowd. At least three people were killed.

Aid officials and the Zairian government have tried to use food as a magnet to draw refugees from Goma, where no emergency food or water is distributed, and into makeshift camps as far as 40 miles away.

A river of refugees poured up the narrow road Friday, leading cattle, goats and children. Most carried mattresses, blankets, cooking pots or water containers on their heads. A few were hauled in wheelbarrows or rode heavily loaded bicycles. Thousands squatted by the roadside under the hazy shadow of nearby volcanoes.

Others never made it, however, and corpses lay in blankets and mats along the road. One man’s body stretched across the pavement where he fell, blocking traffic. And even those who arrived at the camps found little help since no clean water and only a third of the required food was available.

An estimated 300,000 people, for example, have already settled amid the grassy hillocks and jagged lava boulders at Kibumba, 15 miles north of Goma. The camp, a teeming rabble of tiny grass huts dotted with tents of blue plastic, stretches to the hazy horizon. Smoke from cooking fires is thick and foul.

The only local source of water is a scum-covered pond lined with cattle excrement. Entrepreneurs and still-uniformed soldiers of the defeated government army sell plastic containers of water for the equivalent of 50 cents each to those who can afford them. Others sell potatoes, cabbages and freshly slaughtered goat meat by the roadside.

The camp has only one medical dispensary, three tents surrounded by a sea of the stricken. A single tanker truck with 2,000 liters of clean water arrived at the clinic at 1 p.m., but the camp’s needs were 3 million liters a day, said Bob Van Soest, a Dutch sanitation worker.

“It’s a nightmare,” he said wearily. “In this area, you can’t dig for water. We don’t have time to do a survey for drilling. The people are dying under our hands. We need to truck the water in. But the roads are impassable.”

Many here said they had no intention of going back to Rwanda because they fear they will be killed by the Tutsi-run government of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame. An estimated 500,000 Tutsis were hacked and shot to death by vicious Hutu death squads before Kagame’s guerrilla army won control of the tiny mountainous country two weeks ago.

“I can’t go back,” said Salvatori Uzabakiriho, a 20-year-old Hutu and former student in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. “They will kill me. They will kill me because I am not one of them.”

Another refugee, Eustasie Wanzunuwe, 30, insisted--even as she lay with an intravenous drip in her arm--that the cease-fire in Rwanda was only a ruse. “They stopped fighting so we will go back,” she said weakly. “Then they will kill us. That is the strategy.”

The defeated government’s propaganda radio has fueled the panic by warning that victorious Tutsis will show Hutu refugees no mercy if they return. Wild rumors have spread that Tutsis have mined roads into Rwanda and caused the cholera epidemic by poisoning the food and water.

Eight ministers of the former government are in Goma, and aid officials fear the exiled Hutu leaders seek to keep the refugees here as virtual hostages until they can resume the war. In any case, several hundred refugees who tried to return to Rwanda on Friday were halted at the border at Goma by heavily armed Zairian commandos.

Wilkinson, of the U.N. refugee agency, said a letter explaining the new repatriation policy had been given to the local Zairian governor. Wilkinson said he expects the border to reopen in the next few days. “We do not know why” it was closed, he added.

He said the decision to urge refugees to return to their villages came after Michele Moussalli, a special envoy for the U.N. refugee agency, met with Kagame in Kigali on Thursday and met relief officials at the border here Friday. Wilkinson said Moussalli won assurances from the new government that “any Rwandan not wanted for alleged war crimes and who wants to go home will be welcome.”

“We now believe it is safe for the people who want to go back,” Wilkinson said. “We will help anyone who wants to go back.”

No one would be forced to return, he said. He added that no timetable has yet been made for the repatriation, and refugees must return home the way they came--on foot.

He called the decision “a sliver of optimism” amid the horrors that have descended upon this remote stretch of Central Africa. But he admitted it would be “a hard sell” to refugees terrified of reprisals after the Hutu-led massacres.

How to Help

Here is a partial list of aid agencies assisting Rwanda:

Adventist Development & Relief Agency

P.O. Box 4289

Silver Spring, Md. 20914

(800) 424-ADRA

Africare

Africare House

440 R St. N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20001

(202) 462-3614

African Medical and Research Foundation

420 Lexington Ave.

New York, N.Y. 10170

(212) 683-1161

AmeriCares, Rwanda Relief

161 Cherry St.

New Canaan, Conn. 06840

(800) 486-HELP

American Red Cross, Rwanda Relief

P.O. Box 37243

Washington, D.C. 20013

(800) 842-2200

Baptist World Alliance

6733 Curran St.

McLean, Va. 22101-3804

(703) 790-8980

Brother’s Brother Foundation

824 Grandview Ave.

Pittsburgh, Pa. 15211

(412) 431-1600

CARE

151 Ellis St.

Atlanta, Ga. 30303

(800) 521-CARE

Concern Worldwide USA

104 E. 40th St., Room 903

New York, N.Y. 10016

(212) 557-8000

Catholic Relief Services

P.O. Box 17090

Baltimore, Md. 21298-9664

(800) SEND-HOPE

Church World Service

P.O. Box 968

Elkhart, Ind. 46515

(219) 264-3102

Direct Relief International

27 S. La Patera Lane

Santa Barbara, Calif. 93117

(805) 964-4767

Doctors Without Borders USA Inc.

30 Rockefeller Plaza, Suite 5425

New York, N.Y. 10112

(212) 649-5961

The Episcopal Church Presiding Bishops Fund

815 2nd Ave.

New York, N.Y. 10017

(800) 334-7626, Ext. 5138

Food for the Hungry, Rwanda Relief

P.O. Box 12272

Scottsdale, Ariz. 85267-2272

(800) 2-HUNGER

International Aid

17011 W. Hickory

Spring Lake, Mich. 49456

(616) 846-7497

International Catholic Migration Commission

1319 F St. N.W., Suite 820

Washington, D.C. 20004

(202) 393-2908

International Medical Corps

12233 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 280

Los Angeles, Calif. 90064-1052

(310) 826-7800

International Rescue Committee

122 E. 42nd St., 12th Floor

New York, N.Y. 10168-1289

(212) 551-3000

Lutheran World Relief

390 Park Ave. S.

New York, N.Y. 10016

(212) 532-6350

Oxfam America

26 West St.

Boston, Mass. 02111

(617) 482-1211

Operation USA

8320 Melrose Ave.

Los Angeles, Calif. 90069

(800) 678-7255

MAP International

P.O. Box 215000

Brunswick, Ga. 31521-5000

(800) 225-8550

Mennonite Central Committee, Rwanda Relief

P.O. Box 500

Akron, Pa. 17501

(717) 859-1151

Save the Children, Rwanda Emergency

P.O. Box 975, Dept. RW

Westport, Conn. 06881

(800) 243-5075

United Methodist Committee on Relief

475 Riverside Drive, Room 1374

New York, N.Y. 10115

(212) 870-3816

U.S. Committee for UNHCR

2012 Massachusetts Ave. N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20036

(800) 220-1115

U.S. Committee for UNICEF

333 E. 38th St., 6th Floor

New York, N.Y. 10016

(800) FOR-KIDS

World Concern, Rwanda Relief

P.O. Box 33000

Seattle, Wash. 98133

(800) 782-5577

World Relief

P.O. Box WRC, Dept. 3

Wheaton, Ill. 60189

(800) 535-5433

World Vision

P.O. Box 1131

Pasadena, Calif. 91131

(800) 423-4200

YMCA of the USA

101 N. Wacker Drive

Chicago, Ill. 60606-7386

(312) 977-0031