RWANDANS DETAIL KILLINGS BY ZAIRIANS.

Byline: Associated Press 

Rwandan Hutus who survived the latest exodus from refugee camps in eastern Zaire said Saturday that Zairian villagers killed hundreds at one camp, where rebel troops also opened fire.

Rebel leader Laurent Desire Kabila, meanwhile, arrived six hours late for a meeting with a European diplomat and aid workers. The officials were demanding that Kabila tell them the whereabouts of 100,000 missing Rwandan Hutu refugees.

Aid workers have found only a few hundred of the refugees who have vanished since rebel troops sealed off the area south of Kisangani on Monday. They want access to the camps.

Since October, Kabila's forces have seized much of the eastern half of Zaire and have vowed to oust President Mobutu Sese Seko.

Mobutu and Kabila are expected to hold peace talks early in the coming week, South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki announced Saturday night.

Mbeki said a problem over the site of the talks had been resolved, but declined to say where they would be held, the South African Press Association said.

In Zaire, aid workers who flew over refugee camps Friday and Saturday, briefly visiting the largest, said they were disturbingly empty - considering they held thousands of refugees who had been too weak to walk and were dying at a rate of 60 a day.

The refugees are the last of the 1 million Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 while ethnic Tutsis were assuming power. They feared retaliation for the Hutu massacre of a half-million people, mostly Tutsis. Most have since returned to Rwanda.

As international pressure mounted on Kabila to explain how Zairian villagers attacked the refugees and why the rebels failed to protect them, more witness accounts emerged from those who survived.

Faustin Nkizinkiko, a 28-year-old Hutu from Gitarama, Rwanda, said Zairian villagers left ``hundreds of dead'' in the biggest camp at Kasese, 15 miles from this regional capital.

``I don't know if they were organized or not. We tried to protect ourselves, but they were attacking with machetes,'' he said. ``We don't know why.''

Days ago, that camp held 55,000 refugees, many of them suffering from malaria or cholera. Aid workers who briefly visited Kasese on Friday did not see any bodies or mass graves.

U.N. workers were allowed to fly over the camps Saturday to bring food to about 300 refugees spotted there. But they saw mostly rebel troops, not refugees, said Paul Stromberg, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Obilo camp, which held 3,000 refugees, also was empty. Rebel soldiers set up roadblocks around the camp.