Rights Group Calls Renewed War in Rwanda Imminent : Africa: Report confirms government’s fears. It says exiled army of former regime is preparing to retake country by force.

The signs are ominous: Rwanda seems to be tumbling toward a resumption of civil war.

On Monday, the international organization Human Rights Watch issued a report substantiating fears of Rwanda’s young government and concerns of independent officials in the region: The defeated and exiled army of the former regime is rearming and preparing to try to retake the country by force.

Moreover, Human Rights Watch said the campaign by these armed ethnic Hutus threatens to destabilize the entire region.

What is extraordinary about the developments is that leaders of this insurgency are the same people who stand accused of one of the most horrible mass slaughters in modern history, last year’s genocide of perhaps 500,000 or more Rwandan Tutsis.

“During their year in exile, the architects of the Rwandan genocide have rebuilt their military infrastructure, largely in Zaire [to the west], and are rearming themselves in preparation for a violent return to Rwanda,” Human Rights Watch said in its report.

“As they prepare to resume fighting, members of the ousted Rwandan government . . . continue to enjoy impunity from arrest and prosecution for their alleged involvement in last year’s genocide.”

Although alarming, the report comes as no surprise. From the very moment of its defeat, the army of the former government vowed to return to Rwanda by force, and various news accounts over the months have reported its regrouping and its border clashes with the present government. U.N. officials and Western diplomats in the region recently have joined in sounding warnings.

But Human Rights Watch brings a new and credible outside voice to the issue, and its uncompromising report comes as the United Nations prepares to vote June 9 on whether, and how, to reshape its peacekeeping force in Rwanda.

The U.N. peacekeepers are all stationed inside Rwanda, but the country’s former army and militias are regrouping out of reach across the border in Zaire. Human Rights Watch said the United Nations should enlarge its mission and move into refugee camps in Zaire to disarm the Hutu militants--a chore the United Nations already has declined once.

The report specifically accused four countries of having assisted or turned a blind eye to the rearming of the exiled Hutu army, despite a U.N. arms embargo on Rwanda: Zaire, France, South Africa and China.

The sitting government in Rwanda and some Western diplomats say that many other nations are unwittingly helping rejuvenate the militant Hutu cause--providing food and shelter for refugees while moving only with agonizing slowness to bring to justice those among them guilty of genocide and bent on military resurgence.

In the Rwandan capital, Kigali, leaders of the current government, which includes both Tutsis and moderate Hutus but is backed by a Tutsi army, said the report confirms their daily worries.

“None of this is really a secret. We’ve been saying all along they are rearming and retraining,” said Charles Murigande, a senior foreign policy strategist in the government. “The threat of re-invasion has existed since they left Rwanda [last June]. It has always been a question of reorganizing themselves--and that they are doing.”

Limited cross-border incursions have already been occurring for months. U.N. officials confirm increasing accounts of Hutu raiders from camps in Zaire entering Rwanda with mines, grenades and small arms.

“There are more armed incursions; it seems a more organized campaign,” said one senior U.N. official in Rwanda. “When they are captured, they say they are being trained to come in and make contact with their sympathizers inside the country and establish arms caches. It, of course, leads to an increase in tension and unease.”

The question now is how rapidly this occasional conflict might escalate into war, and exactly how prepared the exiled army is to make a challenge.

Rwanda’s contemporary history is one of violent and seemingly unstoppable rivalry between the Tutsi ethnic minority and the Hutu majority. The Tutsis who triumphed in the 1994 civil war spent 30 years themselves in exile, mostly in Uganda, preparing their own armed return.

Kathi Austin, a Washington D.C.-based Africa expert who did research for the Human Rights Watch report, said the militant Hutus now “are regrouping and retraining with the goal of accomplishing in three years what it took the [present government] 30 years to do.”

Some Western diplomats said the exiled Hutu army may have a limited short-term quest: to recapture a small portion of the country and from there seek international mediation for power-sharing and a general amnesty for crimes of genocide--two standing demands of many in the former government.

But the tensions are not confined just to Rwanda. The militancy of the exiled Hutu government already has inflamed neighboring Burundi, which is cursed with the same ethnic hatreds.

Burundi is now home to many tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees, and violent clashes between Hutus and Tutsis are a weekly occurrence.

Even larger countries in the region are being drawn into the fray. Kenya recently expelled the top two diplomats from Rwanda in the country after they complained that former government notables were being given freedom to plan their resurgence from the shelter of Nairobi.