Former PM admits part in Rwanda genocide

IN A landmark development, a former prime minister of Rwanda has pleaded guilty before an international court to six charges of genocide, thus becoming the first official from the former Hutu regime to admit that the 1994 slaughter of more than 800,000 people amounted to genocide.

Addressing the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, Jean Kambanda declared that he fully understood he would be able to mount no defence to the charges, which carry a likely sentence of life in prison. "In deciding to plead guilty, I did so consciously," he told the court. "No one forced me to do it."

Thus far none of the other 24 persons accused of genocide has entered a similar plea, insisting that the numbers of victims had been exaggerated and that the killings were a normal part of war. Mr Kambanda's decision raises the prospect that he will testify against some of them.

Even by the ponderous standards of international courts, the ICTR has hitherto been a debacle, unable to wrap up a single trial in three-and- a-half years of existence, and savagely criticised for incompetence and waste in a United Nations report in 1997. But with the guilty plea, "a certain psychological corner had been turned," according to a senior court official.

Mr Kambanda was prime minister over a three-month period in 1994 when at least 800,000 - some estimate 1 million - Tutsi and moderate Hutus were killed. Though order of a kind has returned to Rwanda, rebel Hutu militias are still active in the north-west, killing 10 people in an attack on a village only this week.

In contrast to the ICTR, the current Rwandan government is pressing harsh justice against those suspected of participating in the massacres. Last week, 22 convicted criminals were publicly executed, and 130,000 others are in jail awaiting trial.

The government in Kigali vows that it will execute all those found guilty of "Category One" war crimes. Mr Kambanda, on the other hand, lived quietly in Kenya before being extradited to Tanzania last year.