OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 9.15pm.
RWANDAN President Pasteur Bizimungu, whose country backs rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said on Tuesday that he is prepared to “reach out the hand of peace” to DRC President Laurent Kabila during this week’s Franco-African summit in Paris.
“I am absolutely prepared to meet President Kabila in Paris and reach out the hand of peace to him,” Bizimungu told the La Croix daily.
Bizimungu charged however that “thousands [of Tutsis] have died” in the DRC, adding: “There is a new genocide of Tutsis that no one is talking about.”
The Rwandan president dismissed accusations by Kinshasa that Rwandan troops killed thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees during Kabila’s rise to power in 1997, saying: “We are always being asked to account for the Rwandan Hutus who disappeared in the ex-Zaire in 1995-1996. But ask Kabila, it’s up to him to reply. He was the head of the rebellion at the time.”
* Meanwhile, in Kigali, a former officer of the Rwandan Armed Forces, Anaclet Rwahama, was sentenced to death Tuesday for genocide and crimes against humanity, military justice sources said.
Rwahama, a sergeant major, was found “guilty of genocide, rape, breaking into homes and non-assistance to people in danger” in Kicukiro, a neighborhood of Kigali, between April and July 1994.
The defendant acknowledged his guilt, but the special chamber of the war council trying him did not take the confession into account because it was made to the court and not at the start of the proceedings against him.
Rwandan law allows for commutation of sentences in the case of immediate confession.
Between 500000 and 800000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in Rwanda in 1994 by FAR soldiers and allied militiamen known as Interahamwe.