Clinton Boosts Aid for Rwanda Refugees : Disaster: The relief effort, now totaling $250 million, includes 24-hour military airlift of supplies.

President Clinton ordered “an immediate and massive increase” in U.S. aid to Rwandan refugees Friday, including a round-the-clock military airlift of food, water and medicine to camps where the death toll has reached dire levels.

“The flow of refugees across Rwanda’s borders has now created what could be the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in a generation,” Clinton said at a White House news conference.

He put the cost of the latest efforts at $100 million, which is in addition to $41 million in aid announced just 24 hours before and about $109 million committed earlier. The Pentagon said several thousand U.S. military personnel will take part.

Clearly stung by the complaints of private relief groups, Clinton promised a military-based effort to rival the relief operation for Kurdish refugees after the Persian Gulf War.

Relief organizations have charged that the response of the United States and other world powers has been woefully inadequate in the face of a massive disaster.

“I have ordered the Defense Department to establish and manage an airlift hub in Uganda, which will be used as a staging area for around-the-clock operations for shipments of relief supplies to the refugees in the Rwandan border regions,” Clinton said. “I have directed the Defense Department to assist in expanding airlift operations near the refugee camps. . . . We will provide personnel and equipment to enable these airfields to operate on a 24-hour basis.”

The highest priority is to combat a rampant outbreak of cholera. The Pentagon said it will establish a safe water supply and will distribute about 20 million oral rehydration-therapy packages. They contain a combination of salts and sugar that can help restore body fluids lost through vomiting and diarrhea.

“Water and sanitation are critical to prevent further loss of life,” Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch said. “To do a complete job on this will take a great deal of time. We are essentially talking about producing here a water system for at least 1.2 million people.”

Clinton observed that “our task in Rwanda is twofold: first, to alleviate the suffering as quickly as possible; second, to take steps to establish conditions that will enable the refugees to return home.”

To speed the refugees’ return, Clinton pledged financial and logistic support to a U.N. peacekeeping force and said the U.S. government will work closely with the newly installed provisional government in Rwanda; Washington has not formally recognized that regime.

The United Nations has authorized a peacekeeping force of about 5,500 mostly African troops, but only about 500 are in place. The United States did not offer its own troops for the force, but Deutch said “several thousand” U.S. service personnel would be engaged in the relief operation.

Although the U.S. troops will have no combat role, Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that the mission is potentially hazardous.

“Whenever you have such tragic conditions ongoing, there’s always tension, there’s always the possibility of violence breaking out . . . so I think it would be wrong to assume that it is without any danger,” said Shalikashvili, who commanded U.S. forces in the Kurdish relief effort.

The State Department said David P. Rawson, U.S. ambassador to Rwanda until Washington broke relations with the ousted Hutu-based government last week, will return to Kigali to contact the new government installed by mostly Tutsi rebels.

On Capitol Hill, the Administration drew mixed reviews, with Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), usually among Clinton’s harshest critics, offering encouragement but Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) complaining that the U.S. response is inadequate.

Interviewed on a Fox television program, Waters said the Administration is late in its response to the crisis because it fails to understand Rwanda’s ethnic politics. “The President and the State Department are not smart enough or up to speed enough to know what to do when they are (still) learning what a Hutu is or a Tutsi is,” she said.