Irish aid planning mission begins in Rwanda

OFFICIALS from the Department of Foreign Affairs today begin a planning mission here to decide how £2 million of Irish aid is to be spent in Rwanda this year.

The officials, who arrived on the aircraft which took the President, Mrs Robinson, out of the country, are likely to approve a number of projects designed to improve the justice and health systems, but the exact details have Yet to be worked out.

The Department team will also Cry to assess whether longer-term development projects are viable at a time when the security situation in Rwanda has deteriorated drastically.

Since the killing of six expatriate aid workers and human rights monitors in January, an estimated 400 overseas staff have left the country. Concern and Trocaire have both reduced their staff, as well as closing offices in the east, where the risk of attacks by former Interahamwe fighters is at its highest.

In the words of one agency director, "we are just one bullet away from withdrawal". The targeting of expatriate staff has introduced a new and dangerous element into a country where tensions run high but which has been relatively peaceful during the past two years.

Yet there are signs that the security situation is calming down once again. Government forces claim to have killed those responsible for the murder of the human rights monitors in Cyangugu. The number of attacks on civilians seems to have dropped off.

"It will take some time to deal with these attacks, but within a few months I am sure we will return to the kind of stability enjoyed before," said Mr Paul Kagame, the Rwandan vice-president and army strongman.

Mr Mark Frohardt, of the UN's human rights field operation, agrees with this forecast.

Yet Mr Frohardt admits that he was severely shaken by the Cyangugu killings, not least for their brutality. His office lost one of its most experienced monitors, an Englishman who was engaged to a Rwandan, in the attack. His Cambodian colleague was gratuitously beheaded after being shot.

Rwanda has long been a hate-filled country; the only new development is that expatriates now seem to have been factored into the equation by the extremists associated with the previous genocidal regime.

Some hope to lessen these antagonisms through education. As Mr Frohardt points out, the genocide was less severe in areas such as Giterama where human rights education had been provided.

But as Mr Bernard Julier, of the International Committee of the Red Cross, told the President during her visit, the situation remains extremely fragile. "Reconciliation between Hutu and Tutsi will take years. The best we can hope for at the moment is peaceful co-existence."