By Moyiga Nduru
NAIROBI, Jul 8 1996 (IPS)

Exiled Rwandese leaders here have urged a new rebel group to drop its threat to kill U.S. citizens living in Rwanda.

“We appeal to PALIR not to attack any foreigner or civilian in Rwanda,” said Martin Niyibizi of ‘The Hope of the Day’, a Nairobi- based organisation that claims to represent the some two million Rwandese refugees in neighbouring countries.

Niyibizi, who is the coordinator of The Hope of The Day, said in a statement made available to IPS on Monday that his organisation was disturbed by a threat by the little-known rebel group, People in Arms to Liberate Rwanda (PALIR), to kill foreigners in Rwanda.

The group made headlines in June when it issued U.S. citizens an ultimatum to leave Rwanda. “PALIR demands the evacuation of all Americans who are on Rwandese territory within two weeks from July 1,” it said in a statement.

A PALIR commander who signed as Muhinza claimed in the June statement that his group had “irrefutable proof implicating the United States in the premeditated assasination of the Hutu heads of state of Rwanda and of Burundi in Kigali when returning from a peace conference from neighbouring Tanzania on April 6 (1994).”

He did not elaborate.

Muhinza also linked the recent trips of U.S. officials to Kigali, including George Moose, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Anthony Lake, who is President Bill Clinton’s national security advisor, to a hardening of the Kigali government’s stance on dialogue with Hutu rebels.

In May ‘The Hope for the Day’ had written to Maj-Gen. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s vice-president and minister of defence, calling for talks with representatives of Hutu refugees. The five-page document, signed by Niyibizi, was sent to the RPF leader through the French embassy here.

“After a week, the Rwandese ambassador in London said in a BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) interview that they will not talk to rebels. They repeated similar statement during the second anniversary of the RPF coming to power (Jul. 2) that they will not talk to us,” said Ngeze.

“Now we see no other solution except to fight until the RPF accepts to negotiate,” he said, adding that he expected PALIR to step up its operations in the next few months. “It’s going to be serious and bloody,” he predicted.

The government in Kigali has vowed not to talk with people involved in the 1994 pogrom. “It’s like Adolf Hitler (World War II German leader) dining with Jewish leaders,” commented a Tutsi resident here. “It simply doesn’t make any sense.”

The media here have reported that PALIR offered a reward of over 1,000 dollars for each American killed in Rwanda. Immediately after the threat, the United States advised its citizens there, mostly embassy and aid workers, to take precautions.

The threat came only days after the United Nations gave Rwanda an improved security rating, lifted a ban on its staff taking their families to that country and said security was improving in Kigali.

Rwanda hosts over 100 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), most of them European and U.S. agencies that poured into the Central African country after the 1994 genocide to provide relief to displaced people.

Some Rwandese leaders here, including Hassan Ngeze, editor of ‘Kangura’, a Kinyarwanda-language magazine that gained notoriety for its role in the 1994 killings, have played down the threat to foreigners.

“So far no American has been killed and I assure you that no single American citizen will be killed in Rwanda by PALIR,” he told IPS.

Ngeze, now a refugee in Nairobi, is rumoured to be a close friend of the PALIR leader, having been spotted with Muhinza in the Kenyan capital at several social occasions.

Ngeze’s magazine, which he continues to publish here, was accused of inciting Hutu extremists to kill Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994, when more than 500,000 people were massacred in Rwanda. As a result, he occupies the number 19 spot on a list of suspected war criminals drawn up by the U.N. Tribunal on Rwanda, which began siting in Arusha, Tanzania, early this year.

PALIR said it was fighting to oust Rwanda’s Tutsi-dominated government and army. In its statement, which was issued here, it said Rwandans were humiliated two years ago when Tutsi rebels took control of the capital and drove the FAR, Hutu militias and the former government into neighbouring Zaire.

The group urged all Rwandans to join the fight against the government. It claimed to be based in Cyangugu in southwest Rwanda and said an external front would be opened to support its struggle.

Over the past few weeks, the Cyangugu area has been hit by a number of attacks which the authorities in Kigali blame on Hutu extremists from Zaire. The chief advisor to the defence minister said recently that it was not possible for a rebel movement to be in Rwanda without the army’s knowledge.

“Those who made the announcement are trying to cash in on recent cross-border violence,” state-run Radio Rwanda quoted the official as saying. “The government is committed to stopping these hit-and-run attacks but it has no reason to believe they are the work of an organised group.”

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