AFRICAN leaders yesterday urged the United Nations Security Council to deploy rapidly a "neutral force" in eastern Zaire to help 1.2 million Hutu refugees facing famine and epidemics.
After a four-hour summit in the Kenyan capital, seven east and central African leaders said the force should create safe corridors to repatriate the refugees to Rwanda and Burundi and provide temporary sanctuary for the huge mass of people.
Meanwhile EU officials met in Brussels yesterday for talks on possible international intervention, diplomatic sources said. Details of the meeting were not released, and a Belgian diplomatic source said concrete proposals were unlikely to emerge from the session.
The African leaders called for an immediate ceasefire in fighting between Zaire's ramshackle army and ethnic Tutsi rebels who have captured swathes of eastern Zaire and its main towns.
The rebels declared a unilateral three-week ceasefire on Monday, to allow the refugees safe passage home, but Zaire has not reciprocated.
Zaire boycotted the Nairobi summit, saying it will not attend such talks until foreign troops a reference to Rwandan forces have left its territory.
The summit outcome confirmed Africa's refusal to accept sole or even principal responsibility for coping with the continent's worst crisis since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
It clearly passed the ball back to the world's powerful nations, the permanent members of the Security Council, and told them to organise a military intervention.
"The summit requested the UN Security Council to take urgent measures to ensure the establishment of the safe corridors and temporary sanctuaries by deploying a neutral force," a final communique said.
It said the "sub-region" presumably east and central African states was ready to contribute. It did not specify that African troops would be offered.
Analysts noted that Rwanda, represented by President Pasteur Bizimungu, agreed the deployment of a military force in eastern Zaire.
Only hours earlier Rwanda's Foreign Minister, Mr Anastase Gasana, said in Brussels his government opposed any such force.
But the analysts noted the key word `neutral's. Rwanda's Tutsi army, a central player in the conflict, does not consider France to be neutral and yet Paris has led the running for the deployment of foreign troops to assist the refugees.
The summit said bona fide refugees should be separated from "intimidators", the tens of thousands of former Rwandan government soldiers and Interahamwe militiamen mainly responsible for the genocide against minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.
Those armed men fled with civilians abroad, mainly to Zaire, in the weeks after the genocide when they were routed by the mainly Tutsi rebels now in power in Rwanda.
The leaders of Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Eritrea and the foreign minister of Cameroon attended the Nairobi summit.
"The conflict in eastern Zaire poses a serious threat to the stability of the entire region," Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi said in opening remarks.
An empty scat with a Zairean flag highlighted the absence of the Zairean Prime Minister, Mr Kengo wa Dondo, under fire at home for the army's feeble showing against Tutsi rebels.
In a reference to Banyamulenge Tutsis who have seized much of eastern Zaire in a two-week-old offensive, the African leaders confirmed the rights of minorities to be considered as citizens.
The summit communique was welcomed as "an extremely positive development" by the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ms Joan Burton. She said it paved the way for the early creation of a two-way humanitarian corridor to ease the plight of refugees in Zaire.
"We're hoping that we will now be in a position to put together a very major humanitarian effort to save the lives of refugees and also to provide the basis for a political settlement in the long run," she said
The EU Development Council will meet under the EU presidency tomorrow to preview the current situation in the region and prepare the union's assistance package.
AFP reports from New York:
Zaire is apparently playing a "central role" in helping Rwandan and Burundian Hutu rebels to rearm on its territory as part of "huge webs" of arms trafficking, according to a UN report obtained yesterday.
The report also concluded that the Hutu militia in refugee camps of Zaire, Tanzania, and until recently, Burundi, were filling war chests with funds reportedly obtained from "the sale of relief goods donated by international humanitarian organisations".
Hutu communities worldwide were involved in the "highly-organised" fund-raising effort, which included a "war tax" levied in the refugee camps.
Refugees working as local staff for humanitarian organisations have their wages "taxed" yielding some $500,000 annually, it said.
The 43-page report by an independent, four-person commission, pointed to "ample and convincing evidence" that fonder Rwandan government forces were "continuing to receive arms from a variety of sources" in violation of a UN arms embargo.