CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: We get four assessments now. Soren Jessen-Petersen is the director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Bill Garvelink is deputy director of foreign disaster assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Lionel Rosenblatt is president of Refugees International, a private humanitarian organization, and Jeff Drumtra is an Africa policy analyst at the U.S. Committee for Refugees, a private refugee advocacy group.
And starting with you, Mr. Garvelink, what is the situation on the ground as we speak, starting in Rwanda?
BILL GARVELINK, U.S. Agency for International Development: Well, I think the return of about a half million refugees worked fairly well. The NGO’s, the UNHCR, and the donor community worked very effectively with the government of Rwanda to move those people back through Goma, to Ginsenyi, the weigh stations, and to their communes. The question now, or the difficulty now is resettling this large group of people into the communes that they came from.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: I’m sorry. The last part of what you said was--
BILL GARVELINK: The communes where the people originally came from are now expanding rather dramatically as these populations come back, and there are shortages of water, food, sanitation, shelter, and the relief community is focusing now on these communes to provide these resources as these refugees resettle again at home.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Do you have anything to add to that, Mr. Jessen-Petersen? You have people on the ground there, the UN?
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN, UN High Commission for Refugees: Oh, we have a lot of people on the ground, and in particular we have them out their in the communes, because we have a fairly big international presence to monitor the safety of these returnees, work with the authorities to make sure that nothing go wrong.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is there a question about the safety? Because these people initially feared going back because of possible retribution, has there been any evidence of any of that?
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: No. I think so far I think they have been received very well. It is evident that we will have to continue monitoring that, and there is in particular, the issue around property and health and which would become very explosive, that is probably “the” potential tension.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You mean, returning to the houses that were once theirs and now that they’ve gone back, they’re occupied by others?
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: Well, they’re occupied by those refugees who came back two years ago, who are now living in their houses, and for them to vacate, you will have to find other housing for them. If not, you are creating a lot of tension down there, and that’s what has to be watched closely.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Drumtra, do you have anything to add to that?
JEFF DRUMTRA, U.S. Committee for Refugees: Well, I think Rwanda, inside Rwanda bears close scrutiny over the next couple of years. It’s a post genocide society. It’s a society that we’re asking people to live together again, and we in the international community don’t have a lot of experience in what happens in a society that has experienced a genocide. There’s a need for large numbers of human rights monitors inside Rwanda to really pay close attention to make sure that these people who have come home are safe, as well as everyone else.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Are they there now, human rights monitors?
JEFF DRUMTRA: There’s about 120 human rights monitors, but--
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: For half million people?
JEFF DRUMTRA: And there are plans to expand that to about 200 in the next couple of months and to 300 by next year.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Rosenblatt, what can you add to that, I mean, especially in terms of condition of the people, are they in good shape? I mean, because they went without--they went on this long march. How long was it?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT, Refugees International: There are two groups. The first group that we all saw about a week ago come out of Goma came from a relatively short distance away from the Megunga camp, and there weren’t that many miles to traverse, and they had had food recently. The group that’s still out in Eastern Zaire is much more problematic. They’ve been cut off from food for three or four weeks now. They’ve had a much longer move. They’ve been in high level elevations, where malaria is a threat, so this is a much different group that we’re looking at now still to come out of Eastern Zaire.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And the group that’s in Rwanda now, what about the disease element there, their physical condition? Because there were reports of cholera and some other things. Are they okay?
BILL GARVELINK: It’s my sense that the population that is in Rwanda is in relatively good health. As Lionel says, they came from a short distance. They had been fairly well fed for the past two years. There’s been cases of cholera but not dramatic, and they seem to be under control.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And the Rwandan government, what is the reaction of the Rwandan government, who are Tutsis, for the most part, right?
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: They have said that these people could come back. They have welcomed them back, and I think until now, they have made a wonderful effort in trying to receive them in the most orderly, and in the most dignified way.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And the agencies don’t have any trouble with access to these people?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: I think, by and large, it’s gone smoothly. I think that one of the keys will be to get the aid that used to go for the refugees across the border in Zaire to be funneled back at that same high level, so that the Rwandans get an idea that as people come home, that support will continue and not be diminished.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is that a problem now?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: It’s a potential problem. We’d like to see a long-term projection of that aid, so that the Rwandans can count on it for some time to come.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But there’s no obstacle to the aid physically getting from one place to the next, from one country to the other?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: At the current moment, no.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Now let’s go then back to Zaire, where there is still--well, we don’t know the dimensions of the problem. Do we have any idea, Mr. Jessen-Petersen?
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: Well, we certainly have an idea, and we know that hundreds of thousands of people have been cut off from assistance for now more than three weeks. We know that they must be in fairly bad shape. We have no access to these people. We don’t know where they are, and for that reason we do not know exactly how many there are, but we know that there are hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: How could that be, not knowing where these people are, Mr. Garvelink?
BILL GARVELINK: Well, I think the conditions--it’s a conflict situation, so populations have been moving in different directions. There’s a mixture of Rwandan refugees, Burundi refugees, and displaced Zaireans, who’ve been scattering in all different directions as fighting has gone on in North Kivu, around Goma and in South Kivu around Bakavu.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Which is where the camps were? Are any people still in those camps?
BILL GARVELINK: Most of the camps are empty, and the populations have moved into the woods, into the forests, so they’re very hard to detect.
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: Let me say that all the camps I entered now, there are no more refugees in any of the camps there.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Drumtra, what’s your sense of why it is that these people--even if it’s a hundred thousand people, or two hundred thousand, the range goes up to seven hundred thousand--why is this so difficult to know how many there are? If there were a million that went in and a half a million that went back, why is the number in dispute about who’s there now? Wouldn’t it be five hundred thousand?
JEFF DRUMTRA: Well, part of the problem is that the refugee leaders over the last two and a half years have not cooperated with efforts to do the right kinds of census, especially in the Goma area. UNHCR made an effort to do a census in 1995, and refugee leaders who want to inflate numbers commit fraud during the census. In ‘96, in September, UNHCR tried to do another census and was blocked from doing it. There was violence in some of the camps. So UNHCR has been prevented in some cases from doing the really accurate counting that it would normally do in a lot of these emergencies.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Rosenblatt, are your people--what are your people telling you? I mean, because some of the people have been--there have been groups of say 50,000, 25,000 in the last couple of days coming out of places, are these part of those missing people, and are they saying anything about where their fellow refugees are?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: Indeed, there are survivor reports which indicate that there are very large groups missing. Our take on the numbers is that it’s clear that several hundred thousand people are missing in Eastern Zaire, cut off from their UN supply of food and water. It makes it clearly the largest refugee crisis in terms of potential deaths that any of us have ever encountered.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What are people doing to try and find them?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: Well, the finding has to do with some aerial photography, and now some access by the UN agencies and the International Red Cross on the ground. But I hope in the next 48 hours we’re going to learn a lot more in terms of access on th
e ground to where these people are, because they’ve been in heavily forested terrain.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is that why you couldn’t see from the air--
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: That’s why it couldn’t be seen easily from the air. There was cloud cover also that inhibited photography, and I think that we’re going to learn a lot more. I know from interviewing survivors just a couple of days ago that they said people had traveled up and down the roads hoping to find a way back into Rwanda, were foraging, selling everything they own for food and water, and were running out of supplies, so we know their situation is quite desperate by now.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Petersen--
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: Yeah. I think the problem is the longer the wait, we wait, the fewer we’ll find, because they will simply just disappear.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You mean, they’ll--
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: And that’s why it is so urgent.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What do you mean, they’ll disappear, they’ll go somewhere, or they’ll just die, and--
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: There is a limit to how long you can go without food and water. These people have run into the forest, into the plantations. They are cut off, and they might simply disappear in front of us.
BILL GARVELINK: But I think there are some encouraging signs right now. In the past few days, in Goma, the UNHCR and the NGO’s have been granted access to a town 30 kilometers away, where there’s twenty to thirty thousand people.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Granted access by--
BILL GARVELINK: By the rebel groups. Also in Bukavu in the past couple of days, the NGO’s and the UN agencies have been allowed in and asked to do assessments. They’ve been told they have free access within 30 kilometers of the town. If they have to go further out of town than that, they need to give notice to the rebel groups, but they have access--or they can do that. And we’ve heard that, I think, beginning tomorrow, UN agencies will be cleared to visit Uvira for the first time. So I think there are encouraging signs that the authorities in Eastern Zaire are allowing the UNHCR, the NGO’s, and the International Committee of Red Cross access to these populations.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Drumtra, is the fighting still going on among the various militias and so on?
JEFF DRUMTRA: There are reports that in some areas the fighting is still going on, and the aspect of this that has to be made clear is this is not just a humanitarian urgency which is great enough. This is a military and political situation on the ground in Eastern Zaire. Many of these refugee leaders who have controlled and intimidated their own followers--
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Primarily Hutu.
JEFF DRUMTRA: Yes. Who still have weapons, the militia that committed genocide in Rwanda two and a half years ago, they still are controlling the movement of some of their own followers, and that is part of the problem. Some of these people may want to be found, and some of these leaders may not want to be found, and that is complicating the situation on the ground. It’s a political situation, not strictly humanitarian.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Garvelink, maybe you can clarify this for us. The Clinton administration has at least endorsed the concept of supporting air drops but has not yet committed to participating in this force that may be based in Entebbe, led by the Canadians, is that right?
BILL GARVELINK: That’s my understanding. It’s not my area of expertise, but it seems as the change occurs in the refugee population and their location, I think the military planners are evaluating the best way to assist in the humanitarian effort. And I think all options should be pursued. I would focus, though, on the International Committee of the Red Cross and UNHCR and the NGO’s who are gaining access as the first--as the best option to reach these people with large amounts of assistance.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Why? What would be wrong with the air drops?
BILL GARVELINK: Nothing wrong with the air drops, but it’s a tactic that’s very short-term. It’s still not going to assist the people to return her to Rwanda. So the relief agencies need access on the ground.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Jessen-Petersen, what do you think about the air drop idea?
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: Well, as a last resort, we would at this stage, because the situation is desperate, we would welcome any measure that could save lives, but I fully agree. The best would be access on the ground. That is very difficult. The problem with the air drop is that air drop, we have tried it before in Bosnia--to be effective, you need a presence on the ground to sort of target the drops and to ensure distribution. The very problem is that we do “not” have access on the ground, so, therefore, we cannot guarantee that they land where the needs are, the largest, nor that they reach those people who need them. In fact, they may fall into the wrong hands, so to speak, the ex-military, the militia. So it is a last resort. We welcome it as a last resort, but we still hope that other options are also being pursued.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Do you agree with that, Mr. Rosenblatt?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: Yes. It is a last resort. The welcome thing about it is we recognize now there’s a grave humanitarian urgency, and that’s where you bring air drops in, because it’s better than nothing, but a last resort.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Yeah. But how much time do you have? I mean, aren’t you in the last resort stage?
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: That’s why we welcome it, why other options are being pursued, just as we discussed earlier. We are gaining a little bit more access every day. We are reaching a few more people, but we cannot wait, sit down and wait, so meanwhile, let us try to do something. Let us try to save as many lives as possible. There, air drops could provide some help.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Do you agree with that, Mr. Drumtra?
JEFF DRUMTRA: Air drops are a last resort, at best. They have a long history of falling into the wrong hands. And as we just discussed earlier, if you understand that there are people on the ground who have weapons, who are holding some of these refugees hostage, those are the folks who are most likely to get the air drops, unless you know exactly who you’re targeting, who’s on the ground, and who is in control of these refugee populations.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But you all agree that something has to be done very quickly, or you’re going to lose upwards of 1/2 million people?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: That’s right. And this is where that force, I think, can also help if it deploys to the area to provide some protection for the U.N. agencies. I think that’s a positive thing to do as well.
BILL GARVELINK: The other side of the coin here that we haven’t discussed is we’ve talked a lot about access from East--through Eastern Zaire. Some of these people are beyond the control of the rebel forces and are far West of that, and those people have to be reached from Kinshasa. The government of Zaire has to assist in reaching those people, as well.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And, in fact, the president of Rwanda says he prefers to have it come from Kinshasa than coming from Entebbe. Anyway, well, thank you all for joining us, and we’ll watch with hope.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: How could that be, not knowing where these people are, Mr. Garvelink?
BILL GARVELINK: Well, I think the conditions--it’s a conflict situation, so populations have been moving in different directions. There’s a mixture of Rwandan refugees, Burundi refugees, and displaced Zaireans, who’ve been scattering in all different directions as fighting has gone on in North Kivu, around Goma and in South Kivu around Bakavu.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Which is where the camps were? Are any people still in those camps?
BILL GARVELINK: Most of the camps are empty, and the populations have moved into the woods, into the forests, so they’re very hard to detect.
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: Let me say that all the camps I entered now, there are no more refugees in any of the camps there.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Drumtra, what’s your sense of why it is that these people--even if it’s a hundred thousand people, or two hundred thousand, the range goes up to seven hundred thousand--why is this so difficult to know how many there are? If there were a million that went in and a half a million that went back, why is the number in dispute about who’s there now? Wouldn’t it be five hundred thousand?
JEFF DRUMTRA: Well, part of the problem is that the refugee leaders over the last two and a half years have not cooperated with efforts to do the right kinds of census, especially in the Goma area. UNHCR made an effort to do a census in 1995, and refugee leaders who want to inflate numbers commit fraud during the census. In ‘96, in September, UNHCR tried to do another census and was blocked from doing it. There was violence in some of the camps. So UNHCR has been prevented in some cases from doing the really accurate counting that it would normally do in a lot of these emergencies.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Rosenblatt, are your people--what are your people telling you? I mean, because some of the people have been--there have been groups of say 50,000, 25,000 in the last couple of days coming out of places, are these part of those missing people, and are they saying anything about where their fellow refugees are?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: Indeed, there are survivor reports which indicate that there are very large groups missing. Our take on the numbers is that it’s clear that several hundred thousand people are missing in Eastern Zaire, cut off from their UN supply of food and water. It makes it clearly the largest refugee crisis in terms of potential deaths that any of us have ever encountered.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What are people doing to try and find them?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: Well, the finding has to do with some aerial photography, and now some access by the UN agencies and the International Red Cross on the ground. But I hope in the next 48 hours we’re going to learn a lot more in terms of access on the ground to where these people are, because they’ve been in heavily forested terrain.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is that why you couldn’t see from the air--
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: That’s why it couldn’t be seen easily from the air. There was cloud cover also that inhibited photography, and I think that we’re going to learn a lot more. I know from interviewing survivors just a couple of days ago that they said people had traveled up and down the roads hoping to find a way back into Rwanda, were foraging, selling everything they own for food and water, and were running out of supplies, so we know their situation is quite desperate by now.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Petersen--
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: Yeah. I think the problem is the longer the wait, we wait, the fewer we’ll find, because they will simply just disappear.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You mean, they’ll--
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: And that’s why it is so urgent.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What do you mean, they’ll disappear, they’ll go somewhere, or they’ll just die, and--
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: There is a limit to how long you can go without food and water. These people have run into the forest, into the plantations. They are cut off, and they might simply disappear in front of us.
BILL GARVELINK: But I think there are some encouraging signs right now. In the past few days, in Goma, the UNHCR and the NGO’s have been granted access to a town 30 kilometers away, where there’s twenty to thirty thousand people.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Granted access by--
BILL GARVELINK: By the rebel groups. Also in Bukavu in the past couple of days, the NGO’s and the UN agencies have been allowed in and asked to do assessments. They’ve been told they have free access within 30 kilometers of the town. If they have to go further out of town than that, they need to give notice to the rebel groups, but they have access--or they can do that. And we’ve heard that, I think, beginning tomorrow, UN agencies will be cleared to visit Uvira for the first time. So I think there are encouraging signs that the authorities in Eastern Zaire are allowing the UNHCR, the NGO’s, and the International Committee of Red Cross access to these populations.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Drumtra, is the fighting still going on among the various militias and so on?
JEFF DRUMTRA: There are reports that in some areas the fighting is still going on, and the aspect of this that has to be made clear is this is not just a humanitarian urgency which is great enough. This is a military and political situation on the ground in Eastern Zaire. Many of these refugee leaders who have controlled and intimidated their own followers--
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Primarily Hutu.
JEFF DRUMTRA: Yes. Who still have weapons, the militia that committed genocide in Rwanda two and a half years ago, they still are controlling the movement of some of their own followers, and that is part of the problem. Some of these people may want to be found, and some of these leaders may not want to be found, and that is complicating the situation on the ground. It’s a political situation, not strictly humanitarian.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Garvelink, maybe you can clarify this for us. The Clinton administration has at least endorsed the concept of supporting air drops but has not yet committed to participating in this force that may be based in Entebbe, led by the Canadians, is that right?
BILL GARVELINK: That’s my understanding. It’s not my area of expertise, but it seems as the change occurs in the refugee population and their location, I think the military planners are evaluating the best way to assist in the humanitarian effort. And I think all options should be pursued. I would focus, though, on the International Committee of the Red Cross and UNHCR and the NGO’s who are gaining access as the first--as the best option to reach these people with large amounts of assistance.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Why? What would be wrong with the air drops?
BILL GARVELINK: Nothing wrong with the air drops, but it’s a tactic that’s very short-term. It’s still not going to assist the people to return her to Rwanda. So the relief agencies need access on the ground.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Jessen-Petersen, what do you think about the air drop idea?
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: Well, as a last resort, we would at this stage, because the situation is desperate, we would welcome any measure that could save lives, but I fully agree. The best would be access on the ground. That is very difficult. The problem with the air drop is that air drop, we have tried it before in Bosnia--to be effective, you need a presence on the ground to sort of target the drops and to ensure distribution. The very problem is that we do “not” have access on the ground, so, therefore, we cannot guarantee that they land where the needs are, the largest, nor that they reach those people who need them. In fact, they may fall into the wrong hands, so to speak, the ex-military, the militia. So it is a last resort. We welcome it as a last resort, but we still hope that other options are also being pursued.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Do you agree with that, Mr. Rosenblatt?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: Yes. It is a last resort. The welcome thing about it is we recognize now there’s a grave humanitarian urgency, and that’s where you bring air drops in, because it’s better than nothing, but a last resort.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Yeah. But how much time do you have? I mean, aren’t you in the last resort stage?
SOREN JESSEN-PETERSEN: That’s why we welcome it, why other options are being pursued, just as we discussed earlier. We are gaining a little bit more access every day. We are reaching a few more people, but we cannot wait, sit down and wait, so meanwhile, let us try to do something. Let us try to save as many lives as possible. There, air drops could provide some
help.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Do you agree with that, Mr. Drumtra?
JEFF DRUMTRA: Air drops are a last resort, at best. They have a long history of falling into the wrong hands. And as we just discussed earlier, if you understand that there are people on the ground who have weapons, who are holding some of these refugees hostage, those are the folks who are most likely to get the air drops, unless you know exactly who you’re targeting, who’s on the ground, and who is in control of these refugee populations.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But you all agree that something has to be done very quickly, or you’re going to lose upwards of half a million people?
LIONEL ROSENBLATT: That’s right. And this is where that force, I think, can also help if it deploys to the area to provide some protection for the U.N. agencies. I think that’s a positive thing to do as well.
BILL GARVELINK: The other side of the coin here that we haven’t discussed is we’ve talked a lot about access from East--through Eastern Zaire. Some of these people are beyond the control of the rebel forces and are far West of that, and those people have to be reached from Kinshasa. The government of Zaire has to assist in reaching those people, as well.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And, in fact, the president of Rwanda says he prefers to have it come from Kinshasa than coming from Entebbe. Anyway, well, thank you all for joining us, and we’ll watch with hope.
A RealAudio version of this NewsHour segment is available.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: The latest Central African crisis began over a month ago along the Zaire-Rwandan border. The Rwandan government, together with rebels in Zaire, moved to seize control of a slice of Eastern Zaire. Their objective was to drive away the Hutu militias who were using the refugee camps around Goma and Bukavu as a
base for attacks against Rwanda. The refugees clustered in those camps were caught between the warring factions. Two years ago, more than a million, mostly Hutu refugees, escaped from Rwanda to Zaire. Among them were militia men and soldiers, who had participated in the massacre of more than half million minority Tutsis in 1994. They were avoiding retribution from the Tutsis, who had seized control of Rwanda after the massacres.
As the recent fighting escalated, aid supplies were cut off. Defying the Hutu militias and soldiers, hundreds of thousands of the refugees, with little food or water, abandoned the camps and fled into the mountains and rain forests. Meanwhile, relief workers with emergency supplies struggled to reach other desperate and hungry Hutus still trapped in the camps. Faced with the possibility of mass starvation in Zaire, several nations, led by Canada, proposed an international force to cover relief and refugee aid. The United States agreed to help, mainly with airlift and logistical support. It also provided an advanced force to assess the situation.
Then in mid November, the rebels succeed in driving off the Hutu militia men and soldiers in the camps. Suddenly, the remaining civilians, mostly women and children, began moving. An estimated half million refugees abandoned the camps and poured back into Rwanda. But there are reports that three hundred to seven hundred thousand are still hiding in the mountains and forests of Zaire. Estimates as to the size and locations of these missing refugees vary wildly. With the dramatic change in the refugee situation over the last two weeks, western governments began taking another look at the need for an international force. This emerged Monday, after a meeting between the U.S. and Canadian defense ministers.
DOUGLAS YOUNG, Defense Minister, Canada: Two weeks ago when we really moved into high gear in trying to marshal some support for humanitarian aid to the folks in Zaire, I don’t think anyone would have dreamt that we’d have over 500,000 people back in Rwanda, without having had to deploy anyone or fire a shot.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: One issue holding up a decision on an international force is determining exactly how many refugees remain in Zaire and their condition. Meanwhile, as refugee agencies and others struggle to get an accurate count, the Rwandan government is arguing against an international force. They contend that there are no more than 200,000 refugees still displaced.
