Rwanda: Nyerere Blames Zaire(congo/DRC) For Crisis In The Great Lakes 1996

Retired Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere on Wednesday blamed the Zairean government for causing the latest crisis in the Great Lakes region by seeking to expel the ethnic Rwandans who have lived within its territory for centuries.

Speaking in New York, at a roundtable organised by the International Peace Academy, Nyerere said that the ethnic Rwandans, called the 'Banyamulenges', had been living in eastern Zaire since the time that region was a part of Rwanda.

"They have always been there before the partitioning (by colonialist powers- Germany and Belgium)," he told an audience of UN ambassadors, representatives of UN agencies as well as journalists.

"No governement has a right to deny them their right of citizenship", said Nyerere, who has been the chairman of the south centre since 1990.

He said that the Banyamulenges, as well as another group of Rwandans who were recruited by the Belgians to work for them in Zaire decades ago, were Zaireans.

"They can't go back to Rwanda...they don't know where their ancestors came from," Nyerere said, adding: "Zaire is a huge country, it can absorb them."

The ethnic Rwandan Tutsis, joined by other discontented groups in the region, have been fighting the Zairean forces since October, forcing the 1.2 million mostly Rwandan refugees in the area out of their camps and creating a humanitarian nightmare.

More than 500,000 of the refugees have since returned to Rwanda, with an estimated 750,000 others still scattered in the hills around the area.

The former president said that the priority of the international force that had been approved by the Security Council for the region should be to help the refugees, most of whom are Hutus who fled Rwanda after the 1994 massacre, to return home.

"The most important job for the international community is to help the refugees to go back," he said "as long as they are in Zaire, they will constitute a potential security problem between the two countries."

On Burundi, where he has been facilitating peace talks, the Nyerere said that only negotiations between the government and the Hutu opposition group could end the crisis in the country.

Nyerere, who led his country from 1961 to 1985, warned that the economic sanctions imposed on Burundi following Maj. Pierre Buyoya's military coup on July 25, would continue unless the minority Tutsis conduct "serious negotiations" with the majority Hutus.

"As soon as it is quite clear that they are willing to talk, I will be talking to the east African leaders about relaxing the sanctions," he said. "I don't like sanctions at all".

Burundi's ambassador to the UN, Terence Nsanze, who attended the session, had said that the sanctions were hurting the country's economy and urged the leaders to lift them immediately to alleviate the suffering of the people.

In introductory remarks, the president of the New York-based International Peace Academy, Olara Otunnu, said that the roundtable, on the theme "Responding to the growing crisis in the Great Lakes Region," was part of activities marking the 26th anniversary of the academy.

From Segun Adeyemi; PANA Correspondent
NEW YORK, (PANA)

Video Credits: News of Africa(NOA)