John Kerry wanted to wait for THIS UN's approval? Maybe he meant some other UN. In related news: Rwandan's Say They Will Protect Sudanese Villagers. Right. Stories in extended entry. The Age:

Nearly 160 people were shot, hacked and burnt to death at a Tutsi refugee camp in Burundi in an overnight attack the country's president blamed on elements from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

At least 159 people were killed and 110 injured in an attack last night on the Gatumba refugee camp, which lies just inside the border with the DRC, near the capital Bujumbura, the military said.

"We have counted 159 dead," spokesman Major Adolphe Manirakiza said. "What has happened is abominable," he said.

Burundi's Hutu rebel National Liberation Forces (FNL) immediately claimed responsibility for the raid, but President Domitien Ndayizeye insisted it had been carried out by foreign assailants.

"Our country has been attacked, our border has been violated by elements coming from the DRC to massacre Congolese civilians who had asked for asylum," he told reporters at the Gatumba camp.

"At the government level, we are obliged to take steps to ensure that justice is done, for those who have committed this crime to be punished."

Rwandan troops will intervene to protect civilians in danger when they are deployed in west Sudan's troubled Darfur region, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said on Saturday.

Rwanda says the world's slow response to the Darfur crisis echoes its own experience during a 1994 genocide, and Kagame's latest comments follow confusion over the exact powers and role of the troops being sent to Sudan.

Some 154 Rwandan troops are being sent to Darfur this weekend as apart of an African Union (AU) force to protect observers monitoring a ceasefire between the Sudanese government and western rebels.

The United Nations calls Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world and says 50,000 people have been killed and at least 1 million more displaced since two rebel groups took up arms against the government in February last year.

"The most important thing is to give a sense of security to the citizens of Sudan," Kagame told journalists at a farewell ceremony for the Rwandan troops, who are expected to be airlifted fro Kigali to Darfur on Sunday.

"They would certainly do that (intervene if civilians are threatened), otherwise they would have no business being there. It is implied in their presence," he said at a military base.

Kagame acknowledged the AU force had a limited mandate, especially to intervene, but said the troops should be seen as the vanguard of a more robust mission.

"That's how it should be seen and understood," he said, adding that while his troops were protect civilians, the mission would be limited not only by its mandate, but also by its small size in the Darfur region, which is the size of France.

A Dutch plane airlifted Rwandan supplies, including several armoured personnel carriers and crew to Sudan on Saturday and was expected to return to transport the 154 troops on Sunday, said army spokesman Patrick Karegeya.

The AU is sending 274 Rwandan and Nigerian troops to protect 60 AU ceasefire observers in Darfur.

The 53-member AU has said it wants to boost the number of troops to Darfur to 2,000 and broaden the original mandate of the AU force to including a peacekeeping role as well as protecting the ceasefire observers.

That plan awaits approval by the head of the AU's security body and no agreement has been reached with Sudan over the deployment of a much larger force. Sudan says it has no problem with African ceasefire observers or African troops to protect those observers, but that peacekeeping is its responsibility.

In the 1994 Rwanda genocide, state-sponsored Hutu militias slaughtered some 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates in 100 days.

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