Rwanda: 'Want peace? Make war'
2004-11-22 12:02
Nairobi - Rwandan President Paul Kagame has told the UN that a planned voluntary disarmament of Rwandan rebels operating from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will not work, a news report said Monday.
Kagame made his remarks after a meeting late on Sunday with members of the UN Security Council, who are currently on a central African tour to discuss peace in the region with leaders there.
President Kagame, a Tutsi, was heading the rebel force that eventually put a stop to the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when 800 000 Tutsis and Hutus who refused to take part in the killings, were slaughtered within 100 days.
He says the rebels operating out of DRC are among those responsible for the genocide.
Kagame has suggested that he will send his army to hunt down the Hutu rebels, if the UN peacekeepers in DRC are not able to contain them.
The BBC reported that Kagame, inside the closed-door session with the Security Council, had said, according to diplomats, "If you want peace, you have to make war."
The cross-border raids of the Rwandan Hutu rebels, and Rwanda's tough stance against them is considered a serious threat to stability in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa.
The visit to Rwanda is part of the UN Security Council's trip to four central African countries who have suffered from conflict in the past decade.
The 15 council members are also set to visit DRC, Burundi and Uganda.
Over the weekend, leaders from eleven countries in the region signed a declaration in Tanzanian commercial centre Dar es Salaam, pledging to find peaceful solutions to the conflicts in the region, which have claimed an estimated 4.5 million lives in the last decade.
One year before the Rwandan genocide, war had broken out in neighbouring Burundi, and that country is still struggling to get back on its feet after years of fighting.
In 1998, war started in the region's giant, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Several other countries were drawn in on either the government or rebel sides, and it came to be known as Africa's World War.
When a peace agreement was signed last year it was estimated three million people had died as a result of the war, from violence, war-induced famine or disease.
The journey to the central African countries followed a special session held by the UN Security Council in Kenyan capital Nairobi last week, where it discussed the two conflicts in Africa's largest country, Sudan.
- SAPA