Clinton Defends U.S. Action on Rwanda : Africa: President rejects criticism that West was slow to act. He says America has provided 40% of relief supplies.

President Clinton defended his Administration’s role in Rwanda on Saturday, dismissing criticism that the slow response of the United States and other Western nations had worsened the human catastrophe now unfolding in refugee camps along the Zaire-Rwanda border.

Clinton told reporters in Hot Springs, Ark., where he was attending his 30-year high school reunion, that he had done “all I knew to do” to help the Rwandans, who have fled their homeland during a vicious civil war.

Clinton said the Administration has been involved in the crisis since May and that the United States has provided 40% of the supplies used in the relief effort.

The President’s statements came as the Pentagon scrambled to gear up the U.S. military force of at least 4,000 troops who will be deployed to the region to bolster relief efforts and help bring order out of the chaos brought on by the wave of refugees.

On Friday, Clinton announced he had ordered “an immediate and massive increase” in U.S. involvement in the Rwandan relief effort.

Until then, the Administration had kept a relatively low profile, mostly providing support for private aid efforts while allowing France to take the lead in providing a Western military response. The French have deployed 2,500 troops to Rwanda in an effort to curb the ethnic violence there, which escalated after the nation’s president was killed in a mysterious plane crash April 6.

Some officials of private aid groups have criticized the slow Western response, but Clinton said that “it’s very difficult to point the finger at anyone.”

Administration officials stress that, in the wake of U.S. involvement in the crisis in Somalia last year, the White House and Pentagon are placing strict limits on U.S. military involvement in the new Rwandan relief effort. In Somalia, what began as a humanitarian effort by the U.S. military to feed the starving ultimately saw American troops become entangled in local civil strife.

In Rwanda, the White House says, U.S. forces will operate independently, will handle only humanitarian tasks and will not join a broader U.N. peacekeeping effort.

In addition, the troops will not enter Rwanda itself, the scene of bloody massacres that have left hundreds of thousands dead and millions more fleeing into the hastily established, open-air refugee camps.

There are more than 1.2 million refugees around Goma, Zaire. Others have sought safety in Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania.

Many are from the Hutu tribe, seeking to avoid retaliation for the killings of hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis by Hutu militias.

The massive influx from Rwanda into the Goma camps has overwhelmed the ability of relief workers to keep up, and an epidemic of cholera, brought on by the filthy water, is sweeping through the camps, killing thousands. As a result, U.S. officials say that one of their top priorities is to airlift military water purification equipment from Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany to the camps, through the use of three U.S. Air Force C-141 aircraft based in Europe.

But Clinton made it clear Saturday that the humanitarian effort is only a stopgap measure and that the solution to the crisis is for the Rwandan refugees to return home as soon as it is safe to do so. Going back to Rwanda is “ultimately the answer,” he said.