WESTERN AID agencies will today begin an attempt to save over a million Hutu refugees in Zaire who face death from starvation or disease unless they receive urgent help.
Nine non governmental organisations (NGOs) - including Ireland's Concern and Trocaire - hope to send staff into rebel held Zairean territory today to begin setting up food and medical stations on routes into Rwanda.
The move follows the failure of the UN Security Council to take steps towards sending a military force into Zaire to protect a humanitarian operation. Meeting on Saturday, the Security Council postponed a final decision until November 20th.
Very small groups of Hutu refugees returned to Rwanda over the weekend and reported that many are already dying in Zaire from hunger and illness.
Meanwhile, shells landed in the centre of Goma yesterday as Zairean troops and Hutu militias were reported to have regrouped, having been driven from the region in fighting over the past few weeks.
The advance of the rebels, conlisting mainly of ethnic Tutsis living in Zaire, is believed to have been halted some 10 miles west of Goma by Hutu militias backed by Zairean troops, who are defending refugee camps.
Yesterday's emergency humanitarian initiative was requested by the Rwandan government, which has devised a strategy that it hopes will lure the Hutu refugees, who fled Rwanda in 1994, back into the country.
The agencies are being allowed into Zaire on condition that they do not re-establish permanent refugee camps, but rather offer sustenance en route to those returning to their former country.
The aim of the Rwandan government is to separate the armed Hutu militias, responsible for the 1994 genocide of up to a million Tutsis, from the rest of the Hutu refugees. Rwanda maintains that the Hutu militias have been preventing the refugees from returning home, and hopes that hunger and the threat of disease will force the militias to let them go.
Rwanda says that the bulk of Hutus who return will be allowed to resettle in their old communities, and that only those implicated in the genocide must "face justice". Estimates of the numbers involved in the 1994 killings vary greatly, however.
The agencies warn that they do not have the capacity to resolve the crisis immediately. A huge amount of food and other supplies will have to be flown into the region in the coming days.
Meanwhile, international political efforts to resolve the crisis continue this morning as the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Joan Burton, arrives in Kigali for talks with Rwandan leaders.
Ms Burton had talks in the Zairean capital, Kinshasa, yesterday with Zairean Ministers and the UN special envoy to the region, Mr Raymond Chretien.
Ms Burton is leading an EU delegation which also includes the Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs, Ms Emma Bonino.
Ms Burton could not be contacted in Kinshasa last night due to telecommunications difficulties. But a Reuter report from Kinshasa quoted Ms Bonino saying after the talks with Zairean ministers that any repatriation of refugees had to be voluntary. She also denounced the UN Security Council for the delays over the sending of an international military force.
Mr Chretien left Kinshasa for Rwanda and Uganda yesterday, expressing frustration at the obstacles to a humanitarian relief effort.
Reuter reports: Zairean rebels have agreed to open up a humanitarian corridor to reach the refugees, a UN official said yesterday. Mr Omar Backhet, of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Rwanda, said the first teams to check on humanitarian needs and security would enter rebel held eastern Zaire today.
"We have reached an agreement with them (the rebels) and we'll be sending in assessment teams first thing tomorrow. The teams will be made up of non governmental agencies and within a day or two UN agencies should be able to go in as well," Mr Backhet said.
Mr Backhet spoke after Mr Chretien returned to Kigali on a mission aimed at narrowing differences between Rwanda and Zaire.
