THOUSANDS of Hutu refugees from Rwanda and Burundi streamed up to the Bukavu high plateau in eastern Zaire yesterday, fleeing fighting further south and causing fears of a new humanitarian disaster.
All 220,000 refugees have left their camps around Uvira, near the border with Burundi, afraid of getting caught up in fighting between Zairean troops and ethnic Tutsis. The clashes have already made relief operations impossible, UN staff said.
Zairean officials have accused the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan and Burundian governments Of backing armed groups of ethnic Tutsis known as Banyamulenge and want both these people and the Hutu refugees to leave the country.
Burundi's army, which like Rwanda denies supporting the Banyamulenge, meanwhile said exiled Hutu rebels from Zaire carried out a raid over the border, attacking the town of Cibitoke for 90 minutes in the morning.
Relief workers said that five civilians were killed in overnight clashes between Zairean soldiers employed to guard refugee camps and local people in the Uvira region.
Fifty-four aid workers have been in the Uvira compound of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for the past three days, sleeping in their cars.
Rumours of an attack on Uvira are sweeping the small town, they said, and schools and markets closed on Monday. Relief workers reported gunfire inside the town yesterday.
In Geneva a UNHCR spokesman, Mr Ron Redmond, warned that the situation "has now deteriorated to such an extent that we are almost back to an emergency phase like in 1994".
He was referring to the flow to Zaire of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans during their country's genocidal civil war, when Hutu extremists killed more than 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus before Tutsi rebels seized power. We appeal to all sides to step back from the brink of what now threatens to become a very real humanitarian disaster in a region that has suffered enough," she added.
Mr Redmond said the 220,000 refugees had "little or no assistance" while aid workers had no access to them or mobility and supply lines were cut. UN teams' were preparing camps in the Bukavu region for refugees who could arrive there.
Bukavu and Goma, on the northern and southern shores of Lake Kivu, close to the border with Rwanda, are both already centres for camps housing more than a million mainly Rwandan Hutu refugees.
A Zairean colonel was due to fly to Uvira yesterday to enforce an order that soldiers open a road to allow the aid workers to get to nearby Kiliba and make the 18-minute flight to Bukavu.
The road to Bukavu, 90 kilometres to the north, remained cut by fighting, but the aid workers also have a contingency plan to drive over the Burundian border to Bujumbura.
The fighting between Zairean troops and the Banyamulenge also involves indigenous local tribes opposed to the presence of the ethnic Tutsis, who have not been recognised by Zaireans, and has claimed at least 83 lives since late last week, according to relief staff.
The UNHCR said that 3,000 Rwandans had appeared in the Bukavu region on Monday evening and had gone to the Nyengezi-Mulwa camp, where aid workers were to assess their health and food needs: Thousands more were arriving yesterday.
Witnesses said troops had stopped the refugees getting any nearer Bukavu, 26 kilometres from Nyengezi.
Howard drops register of sex offenders
By FRANK MILLAR
LONDON
THE British Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, was on the defensive last night, after confirming that today's Queen's Speech will not include promised proposals for a national register of sex offenders.
Mr Howard had trailed a series of measures aimed at providing greater protection for the public. These included new laws making it an offence for convicted paedophiles to seek employment involving them with children, requiring convicted sex offenders to notify police of any change of address, and extending DNA testing to allow samples to be taken from all convicted sex offenders.
But the proposed measures will not feature in the Crime Bill due to be published later this week. Instead the Bill - the law and order flagship of the government's programme for the remainder of the parliamentary term - will focus on automatic sentences for second-time rapists, and minimum jail terms for third-time burglars and drug dealers.
Ministers had argued there was insufficient time for the passage of a more comprehensive and complex Bill, although observers believe the real priority is to put "clear blue water" between the Conservatives and Labour in the run-up to the general election.
And Labour politicians last night ridiculed Mr Howard's insistence that the anti-paedophile drive could yet be accomplished by way of a Private Members' Bill. Whitehall sources said they could not recall such fundamental changes in law being introduced by that route. And Mr Peter Mandelson MP said: "Michael Howard confirms that his promise at the Tory Party conference was a complete sham. He has already blocked one Private Members' Bill on this subject back in April. He has had every chance since then to prepare legislation. He is talking through his hat when he says that another Private Members' Bill would have a better chance than government legislation."
At the Tory conference Mr Howard outlined his plan for a register of sex offenders, vowing "I intend to bring it in". Mr Mandelson accused him of "talking tough and acting weak" and said parents would feel "bitterly let down".