RWANDAN REFUGEES STREAM HOME : HUMAN DISASTER APPEARS AVERTED; FATE OF WORLD MISSION UP IN AIR.

Byline: James C. McKinley Jr. The New York Times

Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees streamed homeward from eastern Zaire on Friday, appearing to break a military and political deadlock that had threatened to cause a human catastrophe on a grand scale.

The sudden exodus of refugees began after Zairian rebels routed ethnic Hutu militias that had prevented the refugees from returning home for nearly two years. The refugees began pouring out of the sprawling camp just as the United States, Canada and other nations were preparing to send troops to rescue more than 1 million refugees cut off from food and water by fighting. That mission is now in question.

The departing refugees choked the main road to Rwanda all the way to the border, nine miles from Mugunga. There were extraordinary scenes along the road: a woman nursing newborn twins, a lost child stumbling along in tears clutching a leaf, hungry people picking unripe beans.

The mass of ragged people marched with bundles on their heads past skeletons and rotting corpses of people killed in battle, past the rude fortifications the Hutu guerrillas had erected, through the town of Goma and over the border.

They came carrying everything they owned - machetes, pots, umbrellas, sheeting, mats, guitars, water cans, burlap sacks full of tattered clothes. They wore the worried looks of people who had lived for weeks with fear and gunfire.

After two years of exile and fear, of living in makeshift huts on a volcanic plain that was never fit for human habitation, many expressed joy at what they considered signs of the end of the ethnic war that caused them to flee in April 1994. Many said they had wanted to return to Rwanda for over a year, but that the Hutu guerrilla forces based in the camps, known as the interahamwe, had prevented them, using intimidation and propaganda.

``We have been kept as hostages for two years,'' Wenceslas Gakwaya, 61, said. ``It was just good luck for us to escape from the interahamwe this morning,'' he said, referring to the outcome of the battle.

The exodus left the future of the proposed military intervention up in the air. The mission of the international force was to set up safe corridors and urge the refugees to return home, using food and medicine as an enticement. But the rebels appeared to have accomplished that on their own Friday, although they denied having timed their attack to force the refugees home before the international troops arrived.

The timing also revived questions about Rwanda's role in the Zairian rebellion. Though Rwanda denies it, Zaire has accused Rwanda's Tutsi-led army of backing the Zairian Tutsi rebels in an effort to close down the refugee camps and destroy the Hutu guerrillas.

Pouring over the border at a rate of more than 70 a minute, the refugees were directed by U.N. workers to an empty refugee camp just inside Rwanda. By evening, when a hard rain began to fall, there were more than 30,000 people crowded into the camp, said Ray Wilkinson, a U.N. spokesman. At least 500,000 others were believed to be on the road in Zaire.

``The impasse has been broken, and these people are moving in the right direction,'' Wilkinson said. ``It wasn't the ideal way to break the problem, like this, but it has been cracked.''

The exodus did not represent a final resolution of the crisis, however, since hundreds of thousands of refugees remain unaccounted for.

The Mugunga camp held about 400,000 refugees before aid workers were evacuated two weeks ago. There were another 300,000 from other camps north of Goma who fled into nearby forests and were headed for the Mugunga camp. It is not known how many arrived.

There are also about 490,000 refugees from the towns of Bukavu and Uvira, 150 miles to the south, who are still scattered through the countryside south of Lake Kivu. After nearly a month without aid, they are believed to have little means of getting food and clean water.

It also remains to be seen if the U.N. refugee agency and the Rwandan government can move the refugees through the border camp before sanitation becomes a problem. U.N. plans for repatriating refugees call for only 12,000 people a day, but hundreds of thousands are likely to arrive in the coming days.

Rwanda issued a statement saying it would no longer support the international intervention plan. Laurent Desire Kabila, the commander of the Zairian rebels, who have close ties to Rwanda, told journalists Friday afternoon that he saw no more need for foreign troops.