US seeks capture of killers

US President Bill Clinton yesterday (Thursday) said his government was determined to bring to justice those responsible for the killings of foreign tourists earlier this week in southwest Uganda’s Bwindi National Park. “If this attack was intended as a warning to our nation to stop supporting those in the region seeking reconciliation and justice, those who committed it should understand that we will not be deterred in any way,” news agencies quoted Clinton as saying. At least 600 Ugandan soldiers and an unknown number of Rwandan troops have crossed into the DRC in pursuit of the Rwandan Interahamwe militia said to be responsible for the massacre of the two Americans, four Britons and two New Zealanders as well as four Ugandans, news agencies said. A team of British investigators arrived in Uganda today (Friday) to help hunt down the rebels, news agencies reported. A US FBI team had previously arrived to assist. Reuters quoted a senior Ugandan investigator as saying the US and British teams would work inside Rwanda and Congo as well as in Uganda. Anti-western messages were left behind by the killers, news agencies reported. Survivors of the massacre said the rebels had singled out British and American nationals and other English-speaking tourists. The DRC rebel movement Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD) accused Congolese President Laurent-Desire Kabila and his supporters in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) of being behind the killings, saying they had trained, rearmed and financed the Interahamwe, Radio Rwanda reported yesterday. DRC Information Minister Didier Mumengi, meanwhile, suggested in a statement broadcast by Congolese state television in Kinshasa yesterday that Uganda with the collusion of Rwanda had “let western tourists fall into an ambush” for their own political benefit and to gain western support.