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Rebel issue fraught by "ambiguity" - Kagame

    NAIROBI

    Rwandan President Paul Kagame has said that the international community has not taken seriously enough, the continued presence of an extremist Hutu militia and former Rwandan soldiers threatening his country from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

    "What I do not understand is why there has been so much ambiguity for so long about dealing with this problem," he said in a nationwide broadcast on Friday.

    He said the prime cause of the Congolese conflict was the presence there of the two dissident groups – the Interharmwe and the ex-FAR - which are widely acknowledged as being responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Various estimates put the number of Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed at between 800,000 and one million.

    "If we do not go to the root cause of the problem, if we do not find the actual solutions that are required, and continue to be diplomatic about these issues, then I think the outcome is very clear. We will continue to have confused reports about the causes of the conflict," he added.

    Kagame has conditioned the total withdrawal of his troops from Congo on the disarmament of the Rwandan Hutu militias. Referring to the possibility of militia cross-border attacks on Rwanda, he said his government could not "to fold its arms and simply wait for another genocide to take place".

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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