<B>RWANDANS</B> confront the challenges of hunting down and punishing the perpetrators of its genocide on Monday during a week of reflection marking the 10th anniversary of the slaughter of some 800,000 people.

Seeking justice for genocide victims has proved one of the toughest challenges for Rwanda, burdened by more than 80,000 prisoners accused of crimes during the 1994 massacres and the knowledge that many top suspects are still at large.

?The forces and ideologues responsible for the genocide in our country have been defeated, they have not been destroyed. They still exist,? Rwandan President Paul Kagame told delegates at the start of a three-day genocide conference on Sunday.

?The real question is: how can we uproot these forces of evil and ensure that they are no longer a menace to our societies??

Participants are due to discuss justice and reconciliation on Monday ahead of a memorial ceremony on Wednesday to bury some of the most recently discovered victims in a tomb housing the remains of an estimated 250,000 people killed in Kigali.

The genocide began after a plane carrying the Rwandan and Burundian presidents was shot down on April 6, 1994, acting as the starting gun for the massacre of Tutsis and moderate Hutus by extremists from the politically-dominant Hutu majority.

Many Rwandans believe justice is an essential part of the painful process of reconciliation, serving both to acknowledge suffering and perhaps reveal the fate of individuals who disappeared during the 100-day frenzy.

?After a genocide, after a mass killing, establishing the truth is extremely important,? said Ervin Staub, a psychology professor from the University of Massachusetts and a holocaust survivor. ?The survivors need to heal.?

One of the most pressing issues is how to deal with some 80,000 suspects held in overcrowded Rwandan jails, whose trials for their suspected role as rank-and-file killers rather than organisers will take decades to resolve using normal courts.

Rwanda has introduced a system of village courts known as Gacaca to speed up the process, training local judges and asking neighbours to act as informal juries in trials for people who may have been their friends or even relatives.

<B>Pink uniforms </B>

The system has accelerated the process of sifting through the legions of suspects who appear at the trials in their pink prison uniforms, but human rights groups have warned of the dangers of false accusations and lack of legal safeguards.

Progress in finding more senior suspects accused of masterminding the killings has also been fraught.

The UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has arrested 66 of the 81 people indicted for genocide-related crimes, but has made only 18 convictions in 10 years, hardly satisfying Rwanda, which says some 300 ringleaders live abroad.

The United States, which has been criticised for not doing more to stop the killings, has offered multi-million dollar rewards for suspects, hoping that finding them will speed the process of healing not just Rwanda, but much of central Africa.

Gangs of killers ? known as ?Interahamwe? ? fled to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after the massacres, creating a security threat that drew Rwanda to invade its giant neighbour in 1998, triggering a five-year war.

Analysts say at until some 10,000 to 20,000 Rwandan Hutus lurking in Congo feel safe enough to return, the country?s reconciliation process cannot be considered complete.

<B>Matthew Green</B>