REFUGEES EMERGE FROM ZAIRIAN FOREST.

Byline: Associated Press 

Rwandan refugees streamed out of the Virunga National Park in eastern Zaire on Saturday, making their way to the Rwandan border and home after 2-1/2 years in exile.

In the border town of Goma, transit point for more than half a million Rwandans who have returned in the past week, doctors reported a sharp rise in cases of cholera, which can be fatal if not immediately treated.

The latest refugees, numbering about 4,000, were exhausted and hungry, and said there were weaker people still in the forest who needed help.

Refugees in camps in eastern Zaire north and south of Lake Kivu fled to the surrounding countryside in the past month to escape fighting between Zairian rebels, government troops and Rwandan Hutu militiamen.

The militiamen had taken control of the huge Mugunga refugee camp northwest of Goma, but a rebel attack Nov. 15 drove them away and freed more than 500,000 refugees who poured back into Rwanda over the past week.

International relief organizations maintain there are still 700,000 refugees in eastern Zaire, but Rwandan Transport Minister Charles Murigande said in Geneva that U.S. satellite photos indicated there were 175,000.

In a meeting of donor nations and aid agencies in Geneva, J. Brian Atwood, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said countries appeared willing to provide Rwanda with more than $700 million to help resettle the returning refugees. No actual aid pledges were made, however.