UN AID workers said yesterday that all the Rwandan Hutu refugees in Tanzania could be home by early next week, as hundreds of thousands more joined the long trek from exile.
Ms Anne-Willem Bijleveld, of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the repatriation of more than 500,000 Hutus in Tanzania would be nearly completed by Monday.
By mid-day on Wednesday some 225,000 had returned from their camps and hideouts. Tens of thousands of others are joining the exodus every day, UN workers say. On Wednesday, some 100,000 were on the move toward the border bridge at Rusumo, including many who had apparently emerged from hiding in the forests.
The refugees from the Ngara region, close to the Rwandan border, are mostly making their way on foot. The weakest are taken by UN lorries and buses.
UNHCR officials have stepped up the pace of convoys ferrying Hutus from their camps further away in Tanzania's northern Karagwe region, near the border with Uganda.
The transportation process was delayed after a Rwandan soldier opened fire at a convoy carrying the old, the sick and lost children. No one was injured.
In Paris on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch/Africa called on Tanzania to "immediately halt the use of force" in its demand that the refugees return and to drop the "arbitrary deadline" of December 31st.
Amnesty International also opposes the demand, charging that it is a violation of human rights and international law.
Some of the Hut us fear reprisals in Rwanda for the 1994 genocide. The first trial of people accused of genocide in Rwanda is to begin on December 30th in Kigali, Judge Jariel Rutaremara said.
He said a former state prosecutor in Kigali and a former local government official would be the first two people to appear in court. "They are accused of genocide and crimes against humanity. Therefore they risk the death penally," he added.
Tanzania has agreed to maintain camps for about 200,000 Hutu refugees from Burundi, south of Rwanda, which is gripped by its own civil war between the Tutsi dominated army and Hutu rebels.
US reconnaissance aircraft have spotted clusters of several thousand Rwandan Hutu refugees in eastern Zaire, UN sources said yesterday.
President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire called yesterday for a new crisis government to be formed within two days, government and opposition leaders said.
They said he had asked them to present "suitable candidates" for a crisis government to the Prime Minister, Mr Kengo wa Dondo.