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KIGALI, June 18 (AFP) - President Paul Kagame of Rwanda on Tuesday officially launched an innovative system of village courts which will try more than 100,000 suspects in the central African country's 1994 genocide.

The orchestrated slaughter of up to a million people "destroyed and bereaved our country, leaving us faced with insurmounable problems," said Kagame, inaugurating the gacaca (pronounced gachacha) system of justice.

The scheme, a resurrection of traditional village conflict-resolution tribunals, is massive in scale, involving more than a quarter of a million judges in 11,000 jurisdictions who will hear evidence from witnesses and pronounce judgement on most of the 104,000 people currently behind bars for their alleged role in the genocide.

"The suffering inflicted on survivors must be punished. Those who committed these crimes, and they are many in the population, must be made known and judged," Kagame said.

"Classic justice cannot achieve this," he added.

Gacaca, said Kagame, should "make the truth known, accelerate judgement, eradicate the culture of impunity and reconcile the people of Rwanda.

"It should also demonstrate the ability of the large family of Rwanda to find for itself a solution to its own problems," said Kagame, addressing all the country's leaders and the diplomatic corps.

The president called on every "citizen of Rwanda to make their contribution to the gacaca courts."

The system will get under way Wednesday in 18 test jurisdictions in each of the country's 12 provinces before being put into operation across Rwanda.

It will involve juries of "people of integrity" elected in October at every administrative level.

The first stage of the process, before accused persons appear later in the year, will be dedicated to establishing, through public testimony, the precise facts and details of the genocide, drawing up lists of victims, damages and alleged perpetrators.

The sixth chamber of the supreme court, which has authority over gacaca, will evaluate this initial phase after two weeks, explained the court's prisident, Aloysie Cyanzayire.

"We must make a difference between crimes of genocide and other crimes committed during or after the war," said Kagame, who led the then-rebel and now ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front to victory in Kigali in July 1994.

Kagame called on survivors to "show patience and tolerance when confronted with the testimony of perpetrators" and on criminals to "admit to their crimes and ask forgiveness."

He also appealed to gacaca's 258,000 judges to act with integrity "to be objective and not discriminate in any way." - Nampa-AFP

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