Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 17:01:38 +0300 (BEAUT)
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Subject: GREAT LAKES: IRIN-CEA Update 899 [2000407]
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U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network
for Central and Eastern Africa
Tel: +254 2 622147
Fax: +254 2 622129
e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org

IRIN-CEA Update 899 for the Great Lakes (Friday 7 April)

CONTENTS:

RWANDA: Kagame reaffirms commitment to Lusaka accord
RWANDA: National commemoration ceremony ends genocide week
RWANDA: Belgian premier apologises
RWANDA: Resignations said to hold danger for Tutsi elite
DEMOCRATIC OF CONGO: Opposition calls protest day
DRC: Constituent assembly holds first meeting
DRC: 50 reported killed in Uvira
BURUNDI: Mandela raps Buyoya over political prisoners


RWANDA: Kagame reaffirms commitment to Lusaka accord

Acting Rwandan President Paul Kagame has reaffirmed his commitment to the
Lusaka peace accords, saying a resolution of the conflict is the only way
to ensure an end to the killing of more innocent civilians. "My advice to
everyone involved in this war is to work for the implementation of the
Lusaka agreement. I do not think there is likely to be any serious changes
on the ground. What people did not achieve when there was serious fighting
they should not think that they will achieve now," he said in a
wide-ranging interview with IRIN on the eve of Friday's commemoration of
the sixth anniversary of the 1994 genocide. 

Kagame said it would be "costly" for people to think they could now alter
the military balance on the ground. "It would be a very wasteful exercise
for anybody to think they can take advantage of the ceasefire to change
the situation on the ground ... Let's implement the agreement and stop
wasting time," he said. Kagame added that he believed the Banyamulenge
Tutsi were in danger because of the "unresolved problems" in the DRC and
reiterated his belief that 5,500 UN peace troops and observers would be
insufficient. "It is nowhere near enough, but one should say it is a good
gesture. But even this gesture has yet to materialise," he said. 

[for full interview see "RWANDA: IRIN Interview with Interim President
Paul Kagame" or access http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/cea/glfp.htm]


RWANDA: National commemoration ceremony ends genocide week

"I call on the government and the people, on the Commission for Human
Rights, on the Reconciliation Commission, not to forget the genocide - and
to rebuild the country," Kigali Prefect Marc Kabandana stated at Friday's
national ceremony to commemorate the genocide anniversary. A memorial site
at Gisozi, on the outskirts of Kigali, would comprise "a mass grave, a
genocide monument, a conference hall and a fire house, to always mark the
dark days of genocide," Rwanda News Agency (RNA) quoted Kabandana as
saying. Thousands of people who died in the 1994 slaughter were reinterred
in mass graves in virtually every prefecture in the country on Friday,
after exhumation over the past few weeks, to end a week of Rwandan
mourning and remembering. 

RWANDA: Belgian premier apologises

Senior government officials from Belgium and the families of 10 Belgian
peacekeepers murdered during the early stages of the genocide as they
tried to protect Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana attended the
memorial ceremony in Kigali on Friday. "They fell before the eyes of a
hesitant command- the final, irresponsible bastion of a badly planned,
badly equipped system that exhibited, to an absurd degree, a culpable lack
of concern" Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said of the men's
death, and the subsequent killing of Uwilingiyimana. "The whole
international community bears a huge and heavy responsibility in the
genocide. I assume here, before you, my country's responsibility - that of
Belgium's political and military authorities. On behalf of my country, of
my people, I ask for your forgiveness," the Associated Press agency (AP)
quoted Verhofstadt as saying. 

RWANDA: Resignations said to hold danger for Tutsi elite

The recent resignations of former president Pasteur Bizimungu and former
Prime Minister Pierre-Celestin Rwigema reflected a policy of suppression
by the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) of moderate Hutus within the
government, and was likely to reinforce opposition to it, according to an
assessment of the political situation by 'Oxford Analytica' on Thursday.
The resignations reflected "serious rifts" between Tutsis and moderate
Hutus within the government, the report stated. "There is no legal
framework for moderate Hutu to oppose the RPF. Hutu opposition, divorced
from both extremist groups and the RPF, is being systematically
marginalised," it added. Yet, unless a democratic, power-sharing
arrangement could be worked out between the Ugandan Tutsi-led elements
within the government and moderate Hutus, the small electoral base of the
RPF within Rwanda would mean that acting president Paul Kagame and the
Tutsi elites risked losing power in the long term through the ballot box,
'Oxford Analytica' stated. 

DEMOCRATIC OF CONGO: Opposition calls protest day

Opposition politicians in the DRC have called for a stay at home protest
on Saturday, 8 April, to denounce delays in implementing the peace deal
signed by the warring parties last August. Joseph Olenghankoy, leader of
the Force novatrices pour l'union et la solidarite (FONUS), called for the
protest in defiance of Kabila's ban on political activity by unregistered
parties, Reuters news agency reported. "We want to mobilise the people to
support the Lusaka accords... to say no to the dictatorship of Kabila and
no to the dictatorship of the rebels," he said. Olenghankoy, who was
jailed in 1998 for "threatening state security" and released last June,
said he stood by his call for Saturday's protest despite being briefly
detained last week.  Another leading opposition party, the Union for
Democracy and Social Progress (UPDS), called for a paralysing "dead town"
protest on Saturday, another on 17 May and one a month until President
Kabila implemented the Lusaka peace deal, the report added. "Mr Kabila
must stop being a major obstacle to national dialogue among the
Congolese," Reuters quoted a party statement as saying. 

DRC: Constituent assembly holds first meeting

A 15-member preparatory committee for the selection of members to a
constituent and legislative assembly which President Laurent-Desire Kabila
intends to establish held its first meeting on Wednesday, Congolese
television reported. The committee established three commissions - one
political, one administrative and one for judicial, budgetary and
logistical matters - to organise elections to the two assemblies, the
committee's general rapporteur Andre Malango Moabila was quoted as saying.
Opposition parties have said it is unreasonable to talk about
parliamentary elections in a divided country, and rejected the proposed
transitional parliament as an attempt to bypass the Lusaka peace accord.
Etienne Tshisekedi of the opposition Innovative Forces for Union and
Solidarity on Friday called for a boycott of the assembly elections,
saying they would sanction the division of the country into separate
states since two-thirds of the country was under the control of Rwandan-
and Ugandan-backed rebel forces, Gabonese radio reported. 

DRC: 50 civilians reported killed in Uvira

Pro-government militias have allegedly killed at least 50 Tutsi civilians
around the Lake Tanganyika port of Uvira and in the neighbouring village
of Makobola, news organisations reported on Thursday. The rebel-appointed
governor for South Kivu province in eastern DRC, Bashingizi Katitima, said
the attackers also ransacked a health centre at Remera in the remote area
of Mulenge mountains, AP reported. Katitima said the attacks took place
this week, but did not give further details. The attackers were reportedly
Mayi Mayi fighters, who are opposed to what they see as economic and
political domination by the Congolese Tutsis and Rwanda. However, a source
from the Congolese embassy denied the reports. He said the news sources
was not "independent", and it was the Banyamulenge who killed civilians
before blaming it on the government because there were usually no
witnesses. 

BURUNDI: Mandela raps Buyoya over political prisoners

The facilitator of the Arusha peace talks on Burundi, Nelson Mandela, has
called on President Pierre Buyoya to admit that Burundi has political
prisoners. "I spent 27 years in prison because of my ideas, so I cannot
tolerate any regime which imprisons people for ideas," Mandela said,
according to a press statement from a meeting of an inter-parliamentary
group on the Great Lakes that he addressed in London. "The existence of
prisoners of conscience in Burundi is common knowledge ... Unless
President Buyoya acknowledges that fact, he can have no credibility within
the international community," Mandela added. 

The former South African president said he was impressed with the
"highly-talented and well educated" delegates at the Arusha talks, and
described his task as "tying up loose ends" in order to achieve the
breakthrough that was imminent, the statement said.  Mandela also called
for an international conference on the development of the Burundi economy,
which remains more than 90 percent agricultural. 

Nairobi, 7 April 2000, 14:00 gmt

[ENDS]


[IRIN-CEA: Tel: +254 2 622147 Fax: +254 2 622129 e-mail: irin-cea@ocha.unon.org ]








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