Rwanda Pleads for Understanding : Violence: Military leader argues that Hutu militia incited deadly clashes at refugee camp.

With the international image of his government horribly tarnished, Rwanda’s military leader asked the world Tuesday not to rush to judgment about the killings at Kibeho camp, arguing that his soldiers were up against an organized enemy militia--not helpless refugees.

Paul Kagame, who holds the rank of vice president and defense minister but who is Rwanda’s most powerful government official, said his soldiers faced a mass charge, orchestrated by a Hutu militia. He insisted Rwandan troops were justified in opening fire.

“The mob inside had gained enough momentum,” Kagame said in an interview with three U.S. journalists. “They went directly to attack the soldiers. I still believe it was right for them (the soldiers) to act as they did in self-defense.”

He conceded, however, that his soldiers may have panicked before the events were over.

This was the first time he had spoken publicly about the weekend killings, which have already resulted in the cutoff of some promised relief aid and called into question Rwanda’s commitment to national reconciliation.

So profound is the question--Who is responsible for the killings?--that the next chapter in Rwanda’s troubled history could easily hinge on the answer, or at least what the outside world and Rwandans themselves come to accept.

Until now, the Rwandan government has offered only sketchy explanation and defense of its forced closure of refugee camps inside its borders.

The United Nations has estimated that 2,000 people died in two awful clashes at Kibeho camp--some shot by army soldiers, some killed by radical refugees in their own midst and some trampled in the panic.

The Rwandan government said the toll was only 300, a figure which Kagame said he believed. But some relief workers said the toll might be 4,000 or higher.

Both the Rwandan government and the United Nations sent investigators to the scene at Kibeho camp Tuesday to continue the ghoulish argument. Kagame said his government “wouldn’t be opposed” to an international inquiry and exhumation of the bodies to resolve the differences.

Often in news coverage and in fund-raising appeals, Rwandan refugees are portrayed sympathetically, Kagame noted.

But he said the global community also should remember that among these refugees are thousands of Hutu men and women who a year ago undertook the systematic slaughter of up to a million people, most of them Rwandan Tutsis, and who now are being given relief food and medical care in camps, instead of being brought to justice.

These refugee camps, Kagame said, “had become sanctuaries for people who carried out the genocide and other crimes in this country.”

Kagame and other government officials interviewed Tuesday said that, in recent weeks, Kibeho camp had become highly militarized by these same men and women. These militias were armed, he said, and even conducted brutal raids into neighboring communities.

When the government and the United Nations urged refugees to go home, these militias threatened to kill anyone who did--”virtually taking those in the camps as hostage,” Kagame said.

The general was particularly bitter toward relief agencies, which, he said, had tolerated this. “They knew they were feeding people who were killers,” he said.

Relief workers have been among those most critical of the actions of the Rwandan forces. The French-based medical organization Doctors Without Borders held a news conference Tuesday to say that the majority of the wounded from the clashes had been shot in the back.

Kagame responded that the first casualties were caused not by the army but by refugee militias inside the camps that were attempting to stop an orderly exodus.

In this country beset for generations by violent conflict between majority Hutus and minority Tutsis, Rwanda’s 9-month-old government held hope for reconciliation. Western nations in January pledged their support and promised $611 million for rehabilitation.

Now, that support is in jeopardy. On Tuesday, Rwanda said it was notified that the Dutch government was suspending its assistance.

The closure of refugee camps occurred only inside Rwanda and did not involve facilities in neighboring countries, where observers have estimated that more than 1 million Hutu refugees fled last summer. But the Kibeho killings are certain to compound fears among these exiled Rwandans that they are not welcome back in their country.

For the next few weeks, the government faces a more urgent problem than exiles: how to control and assimilate the 200,000 Hutu refugees from Kibeho and three other camps that were closed.

On Tuesday, many of these people were holed up in cities in the southwestern part of Rwanda, others fled into the countryside and still others were following the government’s instructions and attempting to return to their abandoned homes.