RWANDA yesterday tried to thwart plans for foreign intervention in eastern Zaire by saying it would refuse to allow a multinational force to cross its soil. Kigali said the people such a force was meant to help the refugees in the region had all returned home.
Reports that hundreds of thousands of people were still missing had been fabricated by aid agencies, the Rwandans maintained.
The Foreign Minister, Mr Anastase Gasana, yesterday said that Rwanda had asked the UN Secretary General, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, to recommend that the Canadian-led force, which was to have carved out humanitarian corridors through rebel-held territory in eastern Zaire, was unnecessary.
Without access to Rwandan airports and roads, a multinational force would be faced with having to go direct into eastern Zaire where Rwandan-backed rebels are equally unsympathetic to foreign intervention.
Rwanda's hostility to the force was made evident at the weekend when an advance party of Canadian troops was detained at Kigali airport for carrying weapons.
Britain, the United States and Canada began backtracking on the need for intervention after the mass return from the Goma camps started on Friday. But France is continuing to insist a multinational force should go ahead because although 500 000 people have crossed into Rwanda a similar number remains unaccounted for in the areas of Bukavu, Uvira and Goma, according to the UN.
Mr Kasana argues that there were never one million Rwandan refugees in eastern Zaire as the UN claims. He says the real figure was only half the official total and that the hundreds of thousands of people the UN says are still missing around Uvira and Bukavu walked more than 100 miles to Goma and crossed back into Rwanda with other refugees last week.
"The figures given by aid organisations are not the gospel truth. The strategy of these agencies is often to inflate the figures to ensure their stocks do not run out and the refugees inflate the size of their families to get more food," he said.
Mr Paul Strongberg, spokesman for the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, said Mr Kasani's claim was nonsense. "There are still hundreds of thousands of refugees outside the country spread out over a large area. The notion that all the people from Uvira trekked up to Goma is simply wrong," he said.
Mr Strongberg added that from the perspective of aid agencies the intervention was still necessary.
Mr Kasana said Rwanda was prepared to accept some foreign troops on its soil provided their mission focused on the refugees who had returned home with projects such as building new housing.
Reuter adds: The US air force said yesterday it was loading the first of its cargo aircraft for the crisis.
A spokesman said the C-17 aircraft was being loaded with equipment to allow US forces to set up an air traffic control system at Kigali airport. Also being loaded was equipment needed to off-load humanitarian supplies on subsequent flights.
"There are no armed troops on the flight to clear the way," he said.
The US Defence Secretary, Mr William Perry, said earlier yesterday that the United States had changed its plans to send security troops to Zaire and instead would provide fewer than 1,000 military logistics personnel to aid refugees in Rwanda. He said that the situation in central Africa remained fluid.