RWANDA RETURNS SLOWING : TROOP PLANS MAY BE SHELVED.

Byline: Chris Tomlinson Associated Press 

The biggest, fastest homecoming of refugees in history slowed late Sunday after three days in which at least a half-million Rwandan Hutus returned from 2-1/2 years in exile in Zaire.

Wearied by their long walk home, families stopped to camp in clusters for 25 miles along the main road east of the Lake Kivu border town of Gisenyi.

As night fell, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Ray Wilkinson said most of the remaining 100,000 stragglers - the very old, the very young and the sick - were being taken across the border by truck.

``The exodus from North Kivu should be over,'' he said.

The movement caused foreign governments to weigh whether an already-approved multinational force was still needed in the region. Military officials from nations planning to send troops - including the United States - were to meet in Germany on Wednesday to decide how to proceed.

The United Nations authorized the military force to safeguard aid distribution in Zaire on Friday, hours after the sudden, surprise return of refugees began.

``The need for humanitarian relief as I see it has not gone away,'' Defense Secretary William Perry said Sunday on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' But, he said, ``The nature of the need is changing dramatically by this migration of refugees from Zaire into Rwanda.''

In Geneva, UNHCR spokesman Fernando del Mundo said the refugee migration was unprecedented. ``This is the largest, swiftest movement of refugees back home that we've ever seen,'' he said.

More Kurdish refugees - about 1.5 million - returned from Turkey and Iran to Iraq when the United States set up a safe haven for them in May 1991, but at a much slower rate, he said.

Aid agencies are now preparing for the hoped-for return of an additional 500,000 refugees from the region south of Zaire's Lake Kivu, said Pierce Gerety, a UNICEF coordinator for humanitarian operations.

The half-million refugees there have been cut off from aid since fighting broke out in mid-October.

The Hutus had fled Rwanda 2-1/2 years ago, fearing retribution after a Hutu-led government presided over the massacre of a half-million Tutsis.

Hutu militias in the refugee camps in Zaire held the refugees virtual prisoners until Thursday, when an attack by Zairian rebels sent the militias fleeing into the hills and the refugees hurrying home.

The Tutsi-led government that now holds power in Rwanda says it welcomes the refugees, and wants them to resume their lives at home in peace.

At least 250,000 people crossed the border Sunday, a number equal to those who have passed in the previous two days combined, UNICEF spokesman Damien Personnaz said.

The new arrivals appeared to be in worse shape, having walked from farther away, he said.

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PHOTO Rwandan refugees and Zairians look for things to loot in the trail of retreating Hutu militia members.

Associated Press