1st U.S. Troops Reach Rwandan Capital to Secure Airport : Africa: Mission will prepare the way for more aid. Defense secretary is scheduled to inspect efforts today.

The first U.S. troops landed in the Rwandan capital Saturday to secure the airport for an expanded international aid effort. The next step is encouraging millions of scared, displaced people to return home.

President Clinton on Friday ordered 200 U.S. soldiers to Kigali to support the relief effort in Rwanda, where millions have fled their homes to escape ethnic carnage that killed up to 500,000 people.

Defense Secretary William J. Perry was scheduled to inspect the U.S. aid mission today.

Lt. Gen. Daniel Schroeder, commander of the joint U.S. task force, said it was unclear how many American soldiers will eventually be sent to Rwanda, whether they will be deployed outside Kigali or how long they might stay.

Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, Canadian commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force here, said total U.S. troop strength in Rwanda could reach about 2,000--if the Americans agree to take on all jobs the United Nations would like them to.

U.N. officials hope a new commitment of American, Canadian and British troops will help them carry out their mission and prompt other nations to send the troops they have pledged.

“The fact the Americans are here will make the other countries send their troops quicker,” said Shaharyar Khan, special representative for Rwanda for U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Thousands of refugees have died in a cholera epidemic in Goma, Zaire, where hundreds of thousands of Rwandans are packed into squalid camps. Relief efforts so far have concentrated on providing them with food, medical care and clean water to prevent the spread of the water-borne cholera bacteria.

The goal now is to persuade the refugees to return home. Most are majority Hutus who fled in fear of reprisals by the victorious Tutsi-led rebels for the mass killings of Tutsis. The rebels have installed Rwanda’s new government.

Aid officials in Goma said Saturday that they thought the cholera epidemic was coming under control. But in Kimumba, the most crowded of the camps around Goma, hundreds of refugees rioted as a Red Cross convoy distributed bags of cooking oil, beans and corn flour.

Refugees said at least one person was killed and others were wounded as men wielding clubs fought off mobs that surrounded the bags of food.

Dallaire said all 200 of the first Americans ordered in should arrive by today.

Schroeder, the U.S. commander, said the size and scope of the U.S. mission in Rwanda were “still ambiguous.” He said those factors will be determined by security conditions and humanitarian needs.

U.N. military sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the plan is to use additional U.S. troops to help move relief supplies to distribution hubs within Rwanda. The Canadian and British troops would join in to move supplies from the hubs to the countryside.

U.S. Special Forces psychological warfare teams would bring in radio equipment to help the new government encourage more than a million refugees in neighboring Zaire to return home. The Tutsi-led government has assured Hutu refugees that there will be no reprisals for the massacres of Tutsis.

Trucks used to carry food into the country would bring back refugees on the return trip. Dallaire said a convoy of six small trucks sent as a test brought back 400 refugees and was mobbed by others wishing to return.

For now, Dallaire said, refugees would be brought back only from Ruhengeri, in northwest Rwanda, to prevent the spread of cholera from Goma or the Rwandan border town of Gisenyi.

Cholera has an incubation period of two days, the amount of time it takes for refugees to walk from Goma to Ruhengeri. Dallaire said way stations and medical aid stations would be set up along the route.

U.N. forces in Rwanda number about 750, but Dallaire said he hopes to increase that number to about 4,000 in the next few weeks. The U.N. Security Council has authorized 5,500 new peacekeepers for the mission.

Britain is sending 600 soldiers to help Rwandan refugees return home, Defense Minister Malcolm Rifkind said Saturday.

The U.N. commander said an additional 4,000 troops would help replace the 2,500 French troops withdrawing from the protection zone they established in southwestern Rwanda. The French are credited with preventing another 2 million people from fleeing into Zaire by providing them with a haven in Rwanda.

But Dallaire said he did not want to create a situation in which refugees would be returning only because foreign troops are in the country.

“I am not going to put a soldier on every street corner to give Rwandans a sense of security,” he said.