World

Ethnic Cleansing Denied

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 5, 2001 / 11:08 PM EDT / CBS

The Central African Republic denied Tuesday that troops fighting to regain full control of the capital after last week's failed coup against President Ange Felix Patasse were engaged in ethnic cleansing.

Dissidents were still holding out in parts of Bangui after more than a week of bloodshed which has left streets strewn with dead and forced thousands to flee amid reports of summary executions.

The United Nations said Secretary-General Kofi Annan would send General Amadou Toumani Toure, a former Malian president who helped restore peace during previous army mutinies against Patasse, to Bangui later this week to try to end the fighting.

The government rejected reports quoted by diplomats and residents of reprisal attacks against the southern Yakoma tribe of rebel leader Andre Kolingba, a former military ruler who lost power to northerner Patasse in multi-party elections in 1993.

"There has never been any question of an ethnic cleansing operation in Bangui. Only the coup leaders and their accomplices are being sought," the government said in a statement.

Efforts were being made to re-establish normal activity in the riverside capital shortly, it added.

Residents said trucks carrying jubilant government soldiers could been seen Tuesday evening coming from the southeastern suburb of Ouango, a former rebel stronghold which was largely subdued at the weekend by Patasse loyalists.

But pockets of resistance remained in parts of Bangui despite help sent by Libya and Congolese rebels and a $32,000 bounty on Kolingba's head.

The putsch triggered the worst wave of bloodletting in the impoverished former French colony since a series of mutinies in the 1990s, with the heaviest fighting in the same southern quarters that were hotbeds of disaffection then.

Despite sporadic bursts of machine-gun fire, Tuesday was significantly quieter than Monday, when heavy shelling rained down on rebel positions in the southwestern quarters of Bangui.

The government said Kolingba was forced to flee in his pajamas Saturday morning when his Ouango home came under attack. It said Kolingba had left behind medicine he was taking for an unidentified illness.

Patasse declared the mutiny over Sunday, when Kolingba's house fell, but government forces appeared not to be fully in control.

A government call for people to return to work Tuesday had little effect. Shops remained closed and city center streets were mostly deserted but for loyalist troops in pickup trucks.

Residents have reported widespread looting by soldiers and Ugandan-backed Congolese rebels led by Jean Pierre Bemba, who came to Patasse's aid. Bemba holds the part of the Democratic Republic of Congo opposite Bangui over the ubangui river.

The conflict has taken on wider international significance since Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and neighboring Chad sent troops and combat helicopters to help Patasse.

The government says the dissidents were joined in their attack by a 300-strong force comprising Rwandan refugees and African mercenaries and led by two Rwandan generals.