|
BY Patrick Nduwimana
BUJUMBURA (Reuters) - Rwandan troops, going on the offensive against Hutu
fighters involved in the 1994 genocide, entered Burundi briefly to hunt
"Interahamwe" rebels hiding in its neighbour's forests, officers of both nations
said.
Burundian army chief of staff Brigadier-General Germain Niyoyankana told a
news conference on Saturday Rwanda had been massing troops defensively for some
time on its borders with Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to
prevent expected attacks by Interahamwe fighters based in the DRC.
"But then some Rwandan troops crossed the border to search for Interahamwe,"
he said, adding the Rwandans had entered on Thursday and left on Friday after
Burundi protested.
"Yesterday we went to the border to talk to Rwandan army commanders and we
told them we will not allow Interahamwe to attack Rwanda, but also we cannot
accept that the Rwandan army crosses our border without the permission of
Burundi".
"We demanded that they do not do that again, because this can destabilise
good relations between our two countries".
Rwandan authorities have been concerned for weeks that the extremist Hutu
Interahamwe militiamen, who fled to the former Zaire after participating in
Rwanda's 1994 genocide, were planning to leave their jungle bases and move
through the northern Burundi forests to attack Rwanda's southern provinces.
A salient of territory formed by Burundi's Cibitoke province has been a
favoured crossing point for DRC-based Rwandan Hutu rebels seeking to attack
southern Rwanda.
In Kigali, Rwandan army spokesman Colonel Patrick Karegeya said the incursion
had been inadvertent.
"That area is a corridor for Interahamwe. We pursued them and killed two of
them," he said. "Because there are no clear demarcations and being at night, our
soldiers crossed over but immediately turned back after realising they had gone
beyond the border lines."
RIGHT TO SEEK OUT ENEMIES
The two small countries are eastern neighbours of the DRC, a giant country
gradually trying to restore some order after a many-sided, five-year conflict in
which an estimated three million people were killed.
Rwanda has long complained that neither U.N. troops nor the Congolese army
are doing enough to root out the Hutu rebels.
The United Nations said on Saturday some 400 Rwandan soldiers had surrounded
U.N. troops patrolling in eastern DRC this week and forced them to return to
their base.
Rwanda denied its army had crossed into Congo, but defended its right to seek
out its enemies.
Many Burundians suspect Rwandan troops have often crossed into their country
to root out Rwandan rebels hiding in Burundi's north. Saturday's statement by
Niyoyankana is the first public disclosure of the practice.
Such is the chaos caused by Burundi's own decade-old civil war that Rwandan
Interahamwe are believed to have found the tiny country a relatively congenial
hiding place.
Some diplomats believe the Interahamwe have been sheltered on occasion by
Burundi's own extremist Hutus of the Forces for National Liberation rebel group.
Ties between Rwanda's Tutsi-led government and the Burundi's Tutsi-dominated
administration are civil but also somewhat wary, because horrific massacres in
both former Belgian colonies have had a momentous impact on each others' modern
history and on the wider Great Lakes region.
The ethnic divide in Burundi mirrors that of neighbouring Rwanda where an
estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in the 1994 genocide.
But unlike in Rwanda, Tutsis have dominated Burundi's government since
independence in 1962 and have committed many of the worst massacres.
The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
