By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 17, 1996; Page A22

Engineers, medical experts and others in the vanguard of Canada's humanitarian mission to eastern Africa assembled here this weekend and are scheduled to inaugurate one of the country's most significant military undertakings since the 1950s with flights starting Sunday.

Small reconnaissance squads already are heading to Zaire and Rwanda, and flights carrying equipment began leaving today from the air force base here on the shores of Lake Ontario, 80 miles east of Toronto.

The first significant movement of troops is scheduled for Sunday, when 100 or more members of the country's newly organized Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) will leave for Kigali, Rwanda. Air force officials are on alert to prepare for the movement of 1,000 or more others as soon as a detailed deployment plan is released, probably early next week.

As teams of engineers lined up for their vaccinations, and air force commanders juggled mission logistics, the mood was upbeat.

Even as refugees began returning home voluntarily, lessening the danger of the mission, the attitude in Canada is that the country is once again on center stage in the world as a peacekeeper, and relishing the role.

"Day to day we train, but we really get our rocks off when we are able to react like this," said Lt. Col. Peter Van Haastrecht. "We're paid to do this and we can do it and we love proving it."

"This is why a lot of us joined," said Michael Blake, a combat engineer whose group will help establish a field hospital and other facilities in preparation for the rest of the DART team and the Canadian commanders who will lead the international effort.

The force was organized over the past week largely at the behest of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his nephew, Raymond Chretien, who is Canada's ambassador to the United States and a special U.N. envoy assigned to coordinate a response to the crisis in Zaire and Rwanda.

Although the situation appeared more dire when Chretien began organizing the force last weekend, with an estimated half-million Rwandan refugees huddled in one camp under the control of armed militias, the United Nations authorized a four-month mission to ensure that food, medical supplies and other relief reach the refugees as they resettle in Rwanda.

To the Canadian officials behind the effort, the fact that the refugees have begun returning is a sign of their success.

In a press conference Friday night, Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy said he believed the commitment of U.N.-authorized troops to the region pushed the armed militants to leave the refugee camps, freeing the refugees to return to Rwanda.

"The initiative taken by the prime minister is already paying dividends," Axworthy said. "It's a direct result of the creation of the multinational force."

While Axworthy and others said they still believe the force is necessary to stabilize the situation and ensure that the relief and supplies arrive where they are needed, this could not have come at a better time for Canada's military and diplomatic community.

For the armed forces, it is a chance to boost the low morale and public doubts caused by the country's troubled peacekeeping mission to Somalia, an effort remembered most for the murder of a Somali teenager by members of a now-disbanded Airborne Regiment. For diplomats, it is a chance to implement a new "peace-building" initiative announced just a few weeks ago that was devised as a way to expand Canada's diplomatic involvement into an area where its military has long been active.

The intent is for Canada first to help establish peace with its armed forces, then provide development assistance and money to rebuild the economy, the courts and other civil institutions so the peace can last.

The last time the country devoted this much military and diplomatic energy to a single project was in its response to the Suez Canal crisis in the 1950s – an undertaking that earned former prime minister Lester B. Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize and ushered in Canada's reputation as a peacekeeping nation. Officials in Chretien's government say this, for Canada, is an even bigger commitment.

"What we are doing now goes beyond that," said Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Gordon Smith. "In the 1950s we pushed for a U.N. force. . . . In this, the world community has given us the responsibility."