August 14, 2009
WORLD Bank President Robert Zoellick has pledged further aid to Rwanda to speed up development after being ripped apart by genocide.

The tiny landlocked East African state is reviving its economy with spending on tourism, agriculture and mining after 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed over a 100-day period in 1994.

Reforms and new programmes have turned the nation around in the 15 intervening years.

"On issue after issue, this is a country on the move," Zoellick said after talks with the government, including a lengthy meeting with President Paul Kagame.

"It's a country that also brings great momentum."

Zoellick, according to Reuters, said the World Bank wanted to bolster the areas of infrastructure, farming and private sector development.

After several years of strong growth, Rwanda has been hit hard by the collapse in global trade and commodity prices.

Lower levels of foreign direct investment are seen slashing growth to around five per cent this year from 11 per cent in 2008.

Over the past three years, World Bank assistance to Rwanda totaled about $400 million.

"I'd like to do more," Zoellick said at the end of his visit to the capital Kigali.

He said Rwanda could benefit from international investment in agriculture and revenues generated by new global climate change initiatives for nations that protect their forests.

"This is a country where you feel for every dollar you spend, or every hour you put in, you get a tremendous return," he added.

Kagame is a former rebel leader whose fighters invaded to stop Rwanda's genocide. He has won praise for running a disciplined administration and attracting foreign investors, but critics say his leadership style is authoritarian.

Zoellick is on a three-nation tour to Africa visiting countries emerging from conflict including Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

Authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday arrested a man accused of planning the massacre of at least 2,000 Rwandan Tutsis during the 1994 genocide.

Gregoire Ndahimana was arrested by Congolese soldiers on Sunday during UN-backed operations to stamp out Hutu rebel group the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in violence ravaged eastern border province North Kivu.

"He was discovered by our units operating in North Kivu ... He was hiding among the FDLR," Congolese Information Minister Lambert Mende said.

Ndahimana was a local administrator in the Rwandan town of Kivumu during Rwanda's genocide.

According to his indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), he is responsible for the deaths of at least 2,000 Tutsis, most of whom were killed when Hutus bulldozed the church where they were being held.

By July 1994, ICTR prosecutors believe almost all of Kivumu's 6,000 Tutsi residents had been killed.

The tribunal, based in the Tanzanian city of Arusha, was seeking Ndahimana's arrest for genocide or complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, and crimes against humanity for extermination.

About 16 people were killed and dozens injured on Wednesday when armed militia attacked DR Congo's largest tin mine.

Gunmen attacked the village of Mpama, a few kilometres from the Bisie cassiterite mine, in Congo's violence-ravaged North Kivu province.

Mpama is home to around 16,000 inhabitants, most of them informal miners who work in Bisie, the country's main source of the tin ore, and surrounding mines. Rebel groups in Congo often control cassiterite, gold and coltan mines whose output finances armed insurgencies.

"The provisional death toll is 16 dead," North Kivu's provincial mines minister Juma Balikwisha said.

UN-supported Radio Okapi reported that local mining police believed as many as 40 people had been killed, and another 45 were injured in the raid.

Authorities say they suspect the attack was carried out by a new Mai Mai militia with links to the FDLR.

During her visit to Congo, U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, on Tuesday called upon the Congolese government and the United Nations to better protect civilians in the east, who have been targeted for reprisal attacks by rebels.
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