East Africa Ceasefire Bid

NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports from Kigali that Zairean Tutsi rebels today declared a unilateral three-week ceasefire. The guerrillas say the truce is designed to give more than one million Rwandan Hutu refugees in Zaire a chance to go home. In the past two weeks, the rebels have captured all of the main cities along Zaire's border with Burundi and Rwanda, and foreign relief agencies have evacuated their staffs. There is little hope the refugees will return to Tutsi-controlled Rwanda, and relief groups say shortages of food and medicine could soon lead to mass starvation and epidemics among the refugees.