Rwanda Denies Aiding Tutsis in Zaire Fighting

The Rwandan government launched a diplomatic and public-relations offensive Monday to refute widespread suspicions that it has actively supported insurgents fighting in neighboring Zaire, or that Rwanda’s troops attacked a crowded refugee camp over the weekend.

President Pasteur Bizimungu flatly denied at a news conference that Rwanda had provided weapons, training, sanctuary or other direct aid to the rebel Banyamulenge movement, which has routed the Zairian military and forced hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees to flee their camps. “Morally, I support these people,” the 46-year-old president said.

He said the Banyamulenge, ethnic Tutsis whose ancestors first migrated to the area in pre-colonial times, were defending themselves against ethnic persecution and atrocities in the latest outbreak of the turbulent region’s ongoing power struggle between ethnic Tutsis and Hutus.

“The Zairians want to exterminate the Banyamulenge, and the international community is doing nothing,” Bizimungu said. “The Banyamulenge must resist or die.”

Bizimungu also vehemently denied charges from Zaire’s government and fleeing refugees that heavy shelling and an attack Saturday by about 200 armed intruders against the Kibumba refugee camp inside Zaire had come from Rwandan mountains half a mile away. “We have never attacked those camps,” he said. “Why should we attack [the refugees] when we want them to come back?”

Anastase Gasana, Rwanda’s foreign minister, took a similar approach at a separate briefing for diplomats. He said Rwanda would not join talks, proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, to negotiate a cease-fire. “We have nothing to do with this conflict,” Gasana said. “It’s purely Zairian.”

Some diplomats here remain openly skeptical of the denials. But no one has yet found or at least revealed conclusive proof of direct Rwandan involvement in the widening war in eastern Zaire. What is clear is that Tutsi-led, military-installed regimes in Rwanda and Burundi have both benefited from the growing chaos in the vast nation to their west.

Both countries long have demanded the closure in Zaire of vast refugee camps that house more than 1 million ethnic Hutus who fled Rwanda after the genocidal war here in 1994. The camp populations are controlled by leaders of the former Hutu government, who instigated and organized the slaughter of more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Troops from the former regime’s defeated army, members of the civilian militias accused of carrying out the genocide and two extremist Hutu groups now waging a civil war in Burundi use the camps--and the food and other relief supplies available there--to support regular guerrilla raids into Rwanda and Burundi.

The armed incursions apparently have eased since the turmoil erupted in Zaire three weeks ago; a weekend attack on the Kibumba camp, closest to the border, did achieve a Rwandan goal by forcing frightened refugees to trek about 10 miles inland.

“I think now they’re perfectly happy to sit back and watch eastern Zaire collapse,” a Western diplomat here said of Rwanda’s government.

Most of the 195,000 ethnic Hutu refugees from Kibumba have now settled at Mugunga, boosting that camp’s population to about 350,000, potentially making it the world’s largest such facility, said Paul Stromberg, spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “It’s a very crowded and chaotic scene,” Stromberg said, adding that food and other essentials, including plastic sheeting, probably would be distributed today.

Meantime, scattered shooting was heard Monday in Goma, Zaire, and the area remained tense. Aid workers were unable to reach Kitale and Kahindo, two northern camps housing an estimated 350,000 refugees, because of recent attacks on truck convoys and buses along the road.

Conditions farther south, where the Banyamulenge forces have pushed back the Zairian army, were apparently chaotic. Heavy shelling and gunfire raged outside the provincial capital of Bukavu, and a local hospital, warehouses and other buildings were reported looted. The United Nations has lost about 100 vehicles in the Bukavu area, including 14 large supply trucks.

The conflict seemingly pits unequal forces. Although the Banyamulenge fighting force was unknown as recently as six weeks ago, a spokesman has claimed that about 2,000 guerrillas are now fighting in the south, where hostilities have been the worst. Arrayed against the Banyamulenge are the far larger but poorly trained and ill-disciplined Zairian army, including the 311th Parachute Brigade and the 41st Commando Brigade, and elements of the local Civil Guard and police.

The Western diplomat said the guerrillas are armed with AK-47 assault rifles, mortars and “pack artillery,” crew-served field weapons that can be broken down and carried by several men.

Ironically, the insurgents apparently obtained many of their weapons from the enemy. “The Banyamulenge have told us consistently that they bought their weapons directly” from the Zairian army, the envoy said.

But little is known about the guerrillas, including their location. “Unless they run up a skull-and-crossbones that we can see from across the border, we don’t know where they are,” said a frustrated U.N. official.