The new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, held talks in Kigali yesterday with Rwandan government officials and aid agencies. The former Irish president, who is visiting Rwanda for the fourth time, held talks with President Pasteur Bizimungu and the military leader and Vice-President, Maj-Gen Paul Kagame, on the human rights situation in Rwanda and the Great Lakes region.
"She is holding talks with the President and Vice-President. She will also be meeting other government officials during her stay," said an official at the UN Human Rights office in the Rwandan capital.
Mrs Robinson arrived in Rwanda on Thursday after visiting Uganda where she held talks with President Yoweri Museveni. She is also due to visit South Africa tomorrow.
As president, Mrs Robinson was the first head of state to visit Rwanda in the aftermath of the April 1994 genocide in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.
Diplomats said the Kigali visit was important for Mrs Robinson, coming at a time when Gen Kagame's army is battling to contain a stepped-up insurgency campaign by Hutu rebels in northwest and central Rwanda.
Early this week, the Hutu rebels attacked a government prison in the central town of Gitarama and freed 500 prisoners. Scores of people died in the raid.
In October and November, the rebels, said to be operating in league with rebels from Democratic Republic of the Congo, fought fierce battles with the army around the north-west border town of Gisenyi. The diplomats said Mrs Robinson would raise with the Rwandan leaders the question of human rights issues in the Congo, where Rwanda has immense influence.
The Kinshasa government of President Laurent Kabila has been accused of rights abuses and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees during a seven-month campaign by Mr Kabila's rebels.
The Hutus had sought refuge in Congo after Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
Rwanda has openly acknowledged that it helped propel Mr Kabila to power in May through the deployment of its troops in a war against the late dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko.
Mrs Robinson will also hold talks at the headquarters of 80 UN human rights officers deployed in Rwanda by her Geneva-based office. UN human rights activities have been sharply curtailed since February when five staff were gunned down in a clearly marked UN car by unknown killers in the south-western Cyangugu region.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, who held talks in Kigali yesterday