AID AGENCIES in Rwanda are preparing for a possible return of 100,000 more refugees over the next few days, while some 400,000 others are reported to betravelling in different directions in eastern Zaire.
The influx through Gisenyi, in the north west of the country, reached a figure of 500,000 yesterday afternoon. Many have now reached their former homes, while the roads are lined with others on their way.
The Hutus fled Rwanda in 1994, fearing reprisals for the genocide of up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The armed Hutu militias responsible for most of the killings, the Interahamwe, used coercion to prevent them from returning.
The situation in Zaire is now confused, with UN and non governmental organisations (NGOs) attempting to make plans based on conflicting reports of the numbers and their whereabouts.
The fighting between rebels and Zairean army forces over the past month has emptied refugee camps in eastern Zaire that have held between 900,000 and 1.2 million Hutus for two years. The refugees have split into several groups travelling in different directions.
The humanitarian organisations now believe that some 100,000 may cross into Rwanda in the next few days into the Rwandan town of Cyangugu south of Gisenyi. A further 150,000 are reported to be in Zairean hills west of Cyangugu, while 100,000 are believed to be travelling north inside Zaire along Lake Kivu, with a view to crossing through Gisenyi.
An unknown number have travelled with the Interahamwe fighters when they fled deeper into Zaire last week. But despite the agencies' firm belief that these numbers are still in Zaire, the Rwandan Vice President, Mr Paul Kagame (regarded as the real power in Kigali), maintained yesterday that almost all the refugees in Zaire have returned.
The Rwandan government is keen to play down the size of the remaining problem in eastern Zaire to support its claim that there is no longer a need to send an international military force to the region.
The Rwandan Foreign Minister, Mr Anastase Gasana, went so far as to tell a press conference that the entire refugee population "with the exception of one or two" had now come home from Zaire.
Meanwhile, the countries that have agreed to participate in the intervention force, originally intended to help feed refugees in eastern Zaire and help them return home, have postponed till tomorrow a scheduled meeting in Stuttgart, Germany to review the planned UN force. The Pope yesterday lent his voice to those who say there is still a need for a strong military intervention force to support the work of the agencies.
There is speculation here that the Tanzanian government may try to drive the 850,000 refugees in their country back into Rwanda before the end of this year. Tanzania's incentive to do so has been increased by reports that an unknown number of Interahamwe members is crossing through Burundi to Tanzania to join up with militia members already among the refugees there.
Reuters adds: Zaire has suspended the army chief of staff, Gen Eluki Monga, for saying an international force was no longer needed in Zaire, the government said yesterday.
"General Eluki has been suspended because of the declarations he made," the government spokesman, Mr Boguo Makeli, said in a statement after the lunchtime news on state television.
France again urged the United States to contribute troops to a multinational peace force for eastern Zaire.
"It would be unbelievable to us that a great democracy like the United States would not be moved by a human tragedy of this magnitude," the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Jacques Rummelhardt, said.
Despite the return home to Rwanda of hundreds of thousands of the refugees that the peace force was intended to help, Mr Rummelhardt told a routine ministry press briefing that Paris was still preparing to send soldiers to the region as part of a multinational force and said Washington should do the same.