KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) --
Rwanda's president resigned today, days after accusing parliament and a
newly sworn-in Cabinet of disobedience and failing to respect his choice for
ministers.
President Pasteur Bizimungu, 49, a Hutu, was embroiled in conflict with the
Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front -- a former rebel group that stopped the
1994 genocide of more than 500,000 people, and now a major political power
-- over corruption and the prosecution of some ministers suspected of graft
and mismanagement.
``From today, March 23, 2000, I resign from the post of President of the
Republic of Rwanda,'' Bizimungu said in a letter to the president of the
Supreme Court.
Although former RPF rebel leader Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, a Tutsi who is both
vice president and minister of defense, is the real power in Rwanda,
Bizimungu's presidency was significant because of Rwanda's majority Hutu
population.
Government officials said National Assembly speaker Vincent Biruta will take
over as interim president until the 18-member Cabinet and the 70-member
parliament decide on the next president.
It was not clear when the decision will be made.
Bizimungu was appointed president by the RPF in July 1994 when the rebels
took power and ousted the former Hutu extremist government responsible for
the 100-day slaughter of more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically
moderate Hutus.
According to a 1993 power-sharing agreement between the then-Hutu government
and the RPF -- and under which Rwanda is still governed -- the RPF names the
candidate for president. Parliament and the Cabinet must ratify its choice.
Under the agreement, Rwandan political parties are allocated seats in both
the Cabinet and parliament according to inter-party arrangements. The
country's leaders last year prolonged the post-genocide transition period
for another five years before committing themselves to elections, arguing
that tensions stemming from the 1994 killings were still too high to
guarantee a free ballot.
Government officials said Bizimungu -- a former businessman and a relative
of Rwanda's late Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana -- was opposed to the
prosecution of ministers and officials suspected of corruption.
The shooting down of Habyarimana's plane as it approached Kigali airport on
April 6, 1994, on the way home from peace talks in Arusha, Tanzania, sparked
the 100 days of slaughter. Those responsible for shooting down the private
jet have never been identified.
In a speech Monday before parliament, Bizimungu accused legislators of
wrongly going after former Prime Minister Pierre-Celestin Rwigema, also a
Hutu, who resigned Feb. 28 following accusations of corruption.
But senior RPF members and some legislators charged that Bizimungu was
invoking ethnic problems as a smokescreen because he was opposed to the
campaign against corruption for fear of being accused himself.
They said Bizimungu has registered two of his trucks in neighboring Congo to
avoid paying taxes on them in Rwanda. They also said he failed to compensate
people he evicted from land where he is putting up a new building and
repeatedly obstructed laws that would allow parliament to censor ministers.
Bizimungu, who is also RPF vice chairman, escaped from Rwanda in the early
1990s and joined the rebels based in neighboring Uganda after one of his
brothers, a colonel in the former Hutu-dominated army, was assassinated on
Habyarimana's orders.
Bizimungu refused to sign off on the new Cabinet for almost a month,
objecting to the exclusion of Patrick Mazimhaka, his senior foreign policy
aide, a Tutsi and one of the RPF founders who was also facing censorship in
parliament on charges of mismanagement.
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