Hutus Rwanda

Bill Richardson, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., made a last shot at trying to persuade President Laurent Kabila to allow a U.N. probe into massacres he said "cast a shadow" over relations with the African nation. President Clinton has threatened to withhold economic aid unless Kabila allows the U.N. investigation into the slaughter of tens of thousands of mostly Rwandan Hutu refugees during the war that ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

Bill Richardson, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., made a last shot at trying to persuade President Laurent Kabila to allow a U.N. probe into massacres he said "cast a shadow" over relations with the African nation. President Clinton has threatened to withhold economic aid unless Kabila allows the U.N. investigation into the slaughter of tens of thousands of mostly Rwandan Hutu refugees during the war that ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

A former Rwandan mayor accused of participating in the killing of several thousand people who sought refuge in a church pleaded guilty to charges of murder and extermination related to the 1994 genocide of more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Paul Bisengimana changed his previous plea of not guilty after striking a deal with prosecutors under which they dropped 10 other charges.

A Rwandan man who was the first person convicted under a law allowing people in Canada to be tried for war crimes committed abroad has been sentenced to life in prison. Desire Munyaneza, 42, was found guilty in May of seven charges, including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for his role in the 1994 rape and slaughter of more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. He will not be eligible for parole for 25 years. He was tried under Canada's 7-year-old War Crimes Act.

A court sentenced 10 people to death and 23 others to life imprisonment for their roles in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, state-run radio reported Saturday. The defendants were convicted of "Class A" crimes--which include organizing militias, leading killings and rape--during the slaying of Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus, Radio Rwanda reported. More than 800,000 people were killed in the massacre organized by the former Hutu government.

The United Nations acknowledged that an aircraft recording device possibly linked to an air crash blamed for triggering the 1994 genocide in Rwanda had turned up in a U.N. filing cabinet. The Paris daily Le Monde had reported that a recorder from the Falcon 50 shot down by a rocket April 6, 1994, killing the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, had been sent to the U.N. and never seen again.

Tanzanian police are suspected of burning down a church and beating Rwandan refugees taking shelter inside to make them join the mass return of Hutus to Rwanda, aid officials said. Twenty-eight Rwandan Hutu refugees staying at the church in the deserted Benaco refugee camp were attacked at night and forced to join a column of refugees trekking toward the Rusumo border crossing into Rwanda, officials in Tanzania said. "Someone went in there and beat them. The church was burned down.

Clashes between troops and gunmen in Burundi's capital resumed for a second straight day Wednesday. Sources said five gunmen and two soldiers were killed. Witnesses said shooting with automatic weapons in the northern suburb of Kamenge, which broke out Monday night and continued until midnight Tuesday, resumed at dawn Wednesday. Military sources said gunmen attacked troops at Nyabiraba, 11 miles from Bujumbura, and five attackers were killed.

A peace summit to end Congo's civil war was postponed Saturday as negotiators wrangled over conditions for a cease-fire. Outside mediators still hoped to salvage a deal "within days." Congolese rebel leaders met face to face with government officials for the first time in weeks, fueling hopes that a full-scale summit was still in the offing, said Salim Ahmed Salim, secretary general of the Organization of African Unity. Salim added that all the warring parties were at the meeting Saturday.

Thousands of Rwandan refugees who had fled into the bush to escape being sent home are streaming back to the stripped-down camps they had abandoned, and some of the weaker ones are dying of hunger, thirst and exhaustion, a U.N. official said Tuesday. A spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Ngara near the border with Rwanda said up to 5,000 refugees were returning to Kitali and Keza camps every hour.

Congolese President Laurent Kabila on Thursday threatened to wage war against neighboring Rwanda, which he accused of masterminding a widening rebellion in eastern Congo, and he warned his citizens to prepare for a "long, drawn-out" struggle to defend their nation. "We must prepare ourselves to resist the aggression and finish the war in the aggressors' home," Kabila said at a news conference here in the Congolese capital.