DATE=4/17/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=RWANDA POLITICS (L ONLY)
NUMBER=2-261425
BYLINE=TODD PITMAN
DATELINE=KIGALI
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: The government of Rwanda has named acting
president Paul Kagame as the central-African country's
new head of state. As Todd Pitman reports from
Kigali, he replaces Pasteur Bizimungu, who resigned as
Rwanda's president last month.
TEXT: There was little contest in the vote during a
special joint session of parliament and the Rwandan
cabinet.
Paul Kagame, currently the country's vice president
and defense minister, received 81 of the 86-votes cast
by government officials.
Mr. Kagame was named last month as one of two possible
successors to Mr. Bizimungu. The other candidate was
Charles Muligande, the secretary-general of the ruling
Rwandan Patriotic Front.
Mr. Bizimungu, a Hutu who had been Rwanda's president
since 1994, stepped down last month in a dispute with
leading members of the ruling party, partly over the
make-up of a new cabinet.
His resignation was the latest in a series by senior
politicians. Prime Minister Pierre Celestin Rwigema,
a Hutu, resigned amid charges of corruption, and the
Tutsi speaker of parliament, Joseph Sebarenzi,
resigned and fled the country earlier this year.
Mr. Kagame, who led the rebel army that ended the
nation's bloody genocide and ousted the former Hutu
government in 1994, will officially take the oath of
office in a ceremony on Saturday.
He becomes the country's first Tutsi head of state
since Rwanda's independence from Belgium in 1962.
(SIGNED)
NEB/TP/JWH/RAE
17-Apr-2000 12:39 PM EDT (17-Apr-2000 1639 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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