KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) -- Rwanda's Hutu president resigned Thursday, days after accusing the Tutsi-controlled parliament, and Cabinet ministers, of unfairly investigating his allies on corruption charges.
President Pasteur Bizimungu, 49, and the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front have been locked in a dispute that illustrates the political and ethnic difficulties of the country's post-genocide power-sharing agreement. The RPF stopped the Hutus' 1994 genocide of over 500,000 people, mainly Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.Senior RPF members and some legislators charged that Bizimungu was invoking ethnic problems as a smokescreen and that he opposed the campaign against corruption for fear of being accused himself.
Although former RPF rebel leader Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, a Tutsi who is both vice president and minister of defense, is the real power in Rwanda, Bizimungu's presidency was significant because of Rwanda's majority Hutu population.
Government officials said National Assembly speaker Vincent Biruta will take over as interim president until the 18-member Cabinet and the 70-member parliament decide on the next president, who -- according to a power-sharing agreement -- must also be an RPF member. Though traditionally a Hutu, there are no ethnic quotas in Rwanda.
Under the 1993 agreement, the RPF names the candidate for president. Parliament and the Cabinet must ratify its choice. It was not clear when the decision will be made.
Last year the country's leaders postponed holding elections for another five years, arguing that tensions stemming from the 1994 killings were still too high to guarantee a free ballot.
Rwandan political parties are also allocated seats in both the Cabinet and parliament.
In a Monday speech to parliament, Bizimungu accused legislators of wrongly going after former Prime Minister Pierre-Celestin Rwigema, also a Hutu, wh o resigned Feb. 28 following accusations of corruption.
Bizimungu also refused to approve a new Cabinet for almost a month, objecting to the exclusion of Patrick Mazimhaka, a Tutsi who acted as his senior foreign policy aide, and who was also facing sanctions in parliament on charges of mismanagement.
But some politicians said Bizimungu has problems of his own: they charge he registered two of his trucks in neighboring Congo to avoid paying taxes on them in Rwanda.
They also said he failed to compensate people he evicted from land where he is putting up a new building and repeatedly obstructed laws that would allow parliament to sanction ministers.
Bizimungu -- a businessman and relative of Rwanda's late Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana -- was appointed president by the RPF in July 1994 when the rebels took power and ousted the former Hutu extremist government.
That government was responsible for the 100-day slaughter of more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.