Kigali, Wednesday
FRANCE and its European and African allies are prepared to intervene
militarily in Rwanda if massacres continue and a ceasefire is not
respected, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe warned today.
He said intervention could take place ''relatively soon if we learn of
new massacres in coming days''.
It would be a ''ground intervention to protect groups threatened with
extinction'', he said after President Francois Mitterrand and Prime
Minister Edouard Balladur today discussed the possibility of a military
move.
Tonight the Foreign Office said that military intervention in Rwanda's
civil war was a matter for discussion at the United Nations.
''We haven't been asked directly to contribute troops,'' said a
spokesman. ''We would be unlikely to make any commitment either way at
this stage.''
In Rwanda tonight, guns fell silent in the capital Kigali after the
Government and rebels signed a ceasefire in Tunis.
''Something seems to be happening,'' said the deputy commander of the
UN peacekeeping force, Brigadier-General Henry Anyidoho.
He said he had still not been officially informed of a ceasefire deal
and, despite the lull, it was not clear if the warring sides had either.
For most of the day they traded mortar and smalls fire, even after the
interim Rwandan president and a rebel leader promised to accept a truce
at the Organisation of African Unity summit in Tunis.
However, today's reports of a new massacre by Hutu militiamen loyal to
the Government threatened the peace moves.
The militiamen abducted 60 Tutsi boys from a church complex in Kigali
on Tuesday and later butchered them, a UN official said.
It was the latest atrocity in a two-month orgy of bloodshed triggered
by the assassination President Juvenal Habyarimana in which half a
million people are estimated to have died.
UN officers said they did not now know if the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda
Patriotic Front would attend talks on implementing the truce.
''It's everyone's guess whether they will come. They are raving mad
and I cannot blame them,'' said one officer.
In Tunis, Rwanda's acting president, Theodore Sindikubwabo, said his
Government would strictly observe the ceasefire and had the means to
stop the massacres.
''We have made a formal undertaking and we call on the population to
respect it,'' he said before the closing session of the OAU summit.
The RPF representative, Pasteur Bizimungu, said: ''Ceasefire means
cessation of all hostilities, of massacres and genocide, and release of
hostages.''
Six Tutsis, who said they fled the complex after seeing the teenagers
abducted, wrote to the international community to appeal for help.
The six, hiding in a Kigali hotel, said the kidnappings were carried
out on the orders of a local government administrator they did not name.
The letter addressed to UN commander Major-General Romeo Dallaire
begged Unamir ''to do all in its power to prevent the imminent execution
of a plan of massacre threatened against us''.
''These swine are still thirsty for human blood,'' the letter said.
Copies were addressed to UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali,
US President Bill Clinton, other world leaders, and human rights
groups.--Reuter.
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