U.N. officials say that if this tiny country is to be spared another war, an international force must be quickly sent to the refugee camps in Zaire, where soldiers and militiamen of the former Rwandan government are increasing their preparedness for war.
Forces of the former government are already making regular incursions into Rwanda and in some instances have ambushed the new government's soldiers, the commander of the U.N. troops in Rwanda, Maj. Gen. Guy Tou-sig-nant, said in an interview Saturday.As the former army continues to regroup and regain its strength, with food being supplied by the international community, the attacks are likely to increase in number and in military efficiency, Tou-sig-nant said.
He said three battalions, or some 2,100 soldiers, were needed to provide security in the camps in Zaire and disarm the former army.
Washington is actively lobbying within the U.N. Security Council for the deployment of a large force, said a senior U.N. official who spoke on condition that he not be identified. But the official said he did not know what the United States was offering in the way of troops, money or materiel.
"We are sitting on a volcano," the organization's ranking official in Rwanda, Shahyar Khan, said in an interview before leaving on Friday for a meeting in Geneva, where the rapidly deteriorating security situation will be discussed in a meeting called by Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Khan, the secretary general's special representative in Rwanda, said he would like to see a commando force of about 500 sent to Zaire immediately.
"We must separate the wolves from the sheep," Khan said about the need to get soldiers and militia members out of the camps.
The mission of an international force would be to disarm the regular army and militia of the former government and to move the soldiers, who are thought to number 30,000, into camps farther from the border.