THE United States yesterday rejected a 60 day deadline given to the United Nations by the Zairean rebel leader, Mr Laurent Kabila, for evacuation of refugees.
To put such a deadline on the UN was "unreasonable ... and unacceptable", especially when Mr Kabila and his rebel alliance had delayed cooperating with refugee evacuation efforts for weeks, the State Department spokesman, Mr Nicholas Burns, said in Washington.
Mr Burns also said that President Clinton's envoy, Mr Bill Richardson, now in Kinshasa, was carrying a letter from Mr Clinton to the Zairean President, Mr Mobutu Sese Seko, whom he planned to meet today.
Mr Richardson was sent to Zaire on an emergency mission by Mr Clinton and the Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, to press Mr Mobutu and Mr Kabila to agree on a ceasefire and to encourage them to work together on a peaceful transition to democracy in Zaire, Mr Burns said.
Mr Richardson, the US Ambassador to the UN, will also investigate the plight of 100,000 Rwandan refugees in Zaire, Mr Burns said.
Aid workers on the ground in Zaire said yesterday it was virtually impossible to meet the rebel demand to repatriate all Rwandan refugees within 60 days.
In addition to up to 100,000 Rwandan refugees missing in the jungle south of Kisangani since last week, 250,000 Rwandan and 50,000 Burundian refugees remain unaccounted for in Zaire since they fled camps at the start of civil war in October.
In Geneva, Unicef said 50 children and several adult Rwandan Hutu refugees at a hospital in Lwiro, 30 km north of the eastern border city of Bukavu, were driven off on trucks on Saturday after men in uniform beat up three medical workers.
"About 20 men in military uniforms drove up in trucks on Saturday morning and fired in the air to warn people not to leave their homes," a Unicef spokeswoman, Ms Francesca Toso, said.
They then stormed into the paediatric hospital, where the children were being treated for serious malnutrition, took them out and put them on trucks, together with some adult refugees, and drove off, warning they might come back," she added.
Blankets, pots, clothes and other personal belongings lay scattered throughout Biaro camp near Kisangani yesterday and most refugees trickling back had little else other than what they wore.
One youth wept as he told how he had been separated from his family. He said he had eaten nothing for more than a week and gorged himself on biscuits given him by aid workers.
Mr Filippo Grandi, the UNHCR regional coordinator, said he despaired at the work needed to be done to nurse the refugees back to health and repatriate them.
"We were all ready to go two weeks ago. Now we have to start from scratch," he said.
. Zaire state television said yesterday political moves had started in parliament to elect a speaker who could be the constitutional interim successor to the ailing and embattled President Mobutu.
It said Mr Mobutu's close associate, Mr Mandungu Bula Nyati, was endorsed by the steering committees of both the proopposition and proMobutu party coalitions in parliament.
Paul Cullen, Development Correspondent, adds:
A Concern volunteer, Ms Adrienne Cassidy, who took part in the convoy which travelled south of Kisangani to Biaro camp, witnessed several thousand refugees emerging from the forest where they had hidden.
Ms Cassidy said many of the refugees, particularly the children, were severely malnourished. They said they had been attacked by local villagers last Monday, and again on Tuesday. Some claimed soldiers had also participated in the second attack.
Relief workers came across one group of 16 corpses, including one body with machete wounds, but there was no evidence of wide spread killings, she said.