An opposition leader has called for a debate about the ethnic make-up of Rwandan governments, stoking a sensitive debate over ethnicity and reconciliation 16 years after the country's genocide.

Victoire Ingabire, leader of the United Democratic Forces (UDF) party, returned to the central African nation this week from the Netherlands to start a bid for the presidency.

But genocide survivor groups and the government accuse her of using tribal rivalries and the 100-day slaughter in 1994, in which 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed, as campaign tools ahead of August's election.

Ingabire denies it and says outstanding ethnic issues must be addressed to forge true reconciliation and lasting stability.

"There was a genocide against the Tutsis. That is the reality ... but we don't have to forget that there were also crimes against humanity against the Hutu people," she told Reuters in an interview late on Wednesday.

"The problem is (how) to share the power between the two groups, and if we don't have the authorisation to talk about it, we will not resolve the problem."

Democracy and freedom of speech remain delicate topics in a country where corruption of the media and the political endorsement of ethnic hatred in the early 1990s lead to the genocide, following years of dictatorship.

"If you have a little group who have all the economy in their hands, and the majority of the Rwandese people, they are poor, that can also be a source of the conflict," she said.
Rwandan Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said Ingabire's comments were unjustified and very risky.

"EXTREMEMLY DANGEROUS"
"People are tried because they have committed genocide or they have committed war crimes. They are not tried because they are Hutu or Tutsi," he told Reuters.

"Those years where the tribal card justified leadership can't happen again ... This is extremely dangerous for her and the audience she is addressing."

Freddy Mutanguha, spokesman for IBUKA, an umbrella organisation of Rwandan genocide survivor groups, told Reuters: "She is trying to play the ethnic card in order to gain power."

President Paul Kagame, a former rebel commander whose mostly Tutsi forces ended the bloodshed in 1994, has been praised for establishing security and rebuilding the shattered country's economy.

Donors praise the transparency of aid distribution and the president's well-publicised fight against graft -- but critics say he is an authoritarian leader who does not tolerate dissent.

Discussion of ethnicity in government is officially taboo, but observers say his administration is dominated by Tutsis.

Ingabire, a Hutu whose party is yet to be officially registered, said it was time to open up the political space and diffuse ethnic tensions through discussion.

"We need to talk about which kind of politics we need, to avoid the two groups struggling for power," she said.

(Reuters)