The U.N. Security Council, two months after the carnage began in Rwanda, has approved 5,500 peacekeeping troops, mostly from other African nations, with a mandate to protect civilians but not stop the fighting.
The troops are to protect civilians under attack in special "humanitarian zones" and help guard relief convoys.
But at the insistence Wednesday of the United States they are not authorized to use force to stop the fighting, between the Hutu-dominated government and the minority Tutsi. U.S. officials say that the United Nations must be realistic in accepting tasks that it is able to fulfil.
Aid workers say about half a million civilians, many of them Tutsi, have been killed in a civil war that began April 6 when a plane carrying Rwanda's Hutu president was shot down by unknown assailants. Hutu blamed the Tutsi.
