MILITARY officials yesterday said they had mapped out ways to provide humanitarian relief to refugees in Zaire, ranging from a low level of assistance to using security forces as protection.
Lieut Gen Maurice Baril of Canada, who would lead any multinational force to help refugees in eastern Zaire, said the meeting of military leaders agreed that as many as 250,000 refugees might still be in eastern Zaire.
Lieut Gen Baril said military planners at the meeting, which began on Friday, estimated that about 575,000 refugees bad so far returned to Rwanda. He said up to 300,000 refugees more could still be in eastern Zaire but that the figure had not been confirmed.
"The mission of a multinational force, as we have defined it, would be to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance and voluntary repatriation of refugees and displaced persons," he said in a statement at a news conference.
"The objectives of such a force would be strictly humanitarian. The force would be politically and militarily neutral," he said.
He did not provide details about possible forces, including contributions from nations attending the meeting. He said individual governments must now review the mission options. These range from continuing to encourage humanitarian assistance and the voluntary repatriation of refugees, to using security forces" to provide protection.
Lieut Gen Baril did not say where the missions could be based in the region. Zaire has welcomed calls for military help while Rwanda has said the mission was unnecessary.
Lieut Gen Baril said he would now return to central Africa to continue contingency planning for any mission. He also reaffirmed that the mandate for the mission would end on March 31st, 1997.
Chris McGreal writes from Goma: Last week, US and UN officials studied the same set of satellite photos of the same tracts of eastern Zaire and came up with entirely contradictory conclusions.
The Americans saw almost nothing. The UN spotted 750,000 miserable souls being driven in circles by war.
As the international debate shifts from what can be done to assist hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees still in Zaire to whether they even exist, the Rwandan government and its allies appear ever more willing to write them off.
The third day of a meeting of Western military chiefs in Germany yesterday was still unable to agree whether there is any need for foreign intervention in eastern Zaire.
The Tutsi dominated government in Kigali and its Zairean rebel comrades in Goma say there are no more refugees. The US took the same view, claiming it could find no evidence of the missing hundreds of thousands in its satellite photos.
It later admitted to having spotted about 200,000 people with aerial flights. Yet the UN says it had no trouble locating nearly four times as many "lost" refugees by satellite and aerial reconnaissance.
It says people are spread across several hundred miles from around Goma, north of Lake Kivu, to Bukavu at the bottom of the lake. Another mass - probably mostly Burundians - was spotted well south of Uvira on the Burundi border.
The single largest mass - estimates say about 300,000 refugees - is concentrating around the town of Walikale, 75 miles west of Goma.
Missionaries report that they are being driven by Zairean army units retreating from the rebel offensive towards the city of Kisangani.
A similar number of refugees is on the move far south of Bukavu. This group probably includes Zaireans who fled the rebel occupation.
The UN says another 175,000 refugees are believed encamped at Nyumbi, on the west bank of Lake Kivu, with remaining units of the Hutu extremist Interahamwe militias chased from the camps by the rebels and Rwandan army 10 days ago.
There is no firm information about the condition of the "lost" refugees but, unlike most of those who left Zaire after a short march from Mugunga refugee camp, the bulk of them fled their camps a month ago. Since then they have been kept moving by the fighting, and living off the land.
A few individuals who have escaped report deaths from starvation, exhaustion and disease. Yet the Rwandan government and Zairean rebels continue to deny the refugees' existence.