Rwanda Downplays Threat of War : Africa: Defense minister minimizes U.N. report that exiled troops are moving over border. But he says precautions are needed.

Defense Minister Paul Kagame on Thursday downplayed a U.N. official’s conclusion that guerrilla warfare might soon erupt in Rwanda, but said his troops must quickly move into a former “safe haven” for refugees to ensure that it doesn’t happen.

Asked if armed men from the former government now in exile in Zaire were infiltrating border areas of Rwanda, as the top U.N. official here indicated this week, Kagame said: “We have been seeing some funny movements, especially around the border with Burundi, and then, of course, the area inside (the country).”

Soldiers and members of the militia of the former hard-line Hutu government and ruling party--defeated in a civil war that ended in July--”have been moving freely around, terrorizing the civilians,” said Kagame, who also holds the post of vice president in the new government. “We have been seeing such activities and have been concerned. We need to check that out and bring it under control.”

Kagame, who guided the young soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front to victory, is believed by many to be this African country’s top leader now.

In a report this week to U.N. headquarters in New York, Shahryar Khan, special representative in Rwanda of the U.N. secretary general, said that in the period Aug. 29-Sept. 4, young men carrying large stocks of weapons and rations had been spotted infiltrating the country’s southwest, a remote and forested area that the French had turned into a sanctuary for fleeing Rwandan refugees.

These are “classic preparations for guerrilla war,” Khan said, noting how favorable the terrain would be for insurgency operations; U.N. peacekeeping officers say it is screened from aerial reconnaissance by thick canopies of foliage.

The high-ranking U.N. official gave no hint of the size of the infiltrations, but Kagame maintained that “they’re on a limited scale so far, not a big problem.”

Returnees from the defeated army have “just been responsible for isolated incidents,” Khan said. “It hasn’t yet gone to high levels of threat.”

But the fact that hostile and armed men are now sneaking into the country demands a prompt reaction, Kagame said. “That’s why we have been urging UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda) to help us work out very fast ways of getting into that zone.”

This week, Rwanda’s new government for the first time sent permanent civilian administrators and soldiers into the southwest, U.N. officials reported.

An estimated 480,000 refugees from the ethnic Hutu majority are in the southwest, along with more than 1 million local inhabitants. Many of the refugees fear they will be victimized and subjected to reprisals by the RPF’s army, which is led by Tutsis, because of the nationwide massacres perpetrated by Rwanda’s former government in the spring. Those fears are the reason Kagame’s men have been cautious in taking control.

Initial reports were that their arrival was hardly welcomed. In Gikongoro, where one platoon has taken up positions, “the reception was cool. It’s not like when you’re meeting an old friend,” said UNAMIR’s Maj. Jean-Guy Plante.