BRUSSELS - European Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Emma Bonino on Thursday accused governments in Africa's Great Lakes region of sabotaging international efforts to help Rwandan and Burundian refugees stranded in the former Zaire. "The saddening reality (is) that there is no longer a humanitarian space in the Great Lakes Region because of the abuses perpetrated by local governments," Bonino said in a statement. The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR announced on Tuesday it was suspending operations in the former Zaire, renamed Democratic Republic of Congo, citing the forced repatriation of Rwandan refugees by the government of President Laurent Kabila. Bonino said she was "disheartened, but not surprised" by the "dismissive" attitude of Kabila, who on Wednesday welcomed the UNHCR pull-out as "a relief". A spokesman for the Italian Commissioner said the UNHCR departure could trigger the withdrawal of many of the aid agencies and international bodies -- including the European Union's humanitarian unit ECHO --

which have been operating under its umbrella throughout the central African refugee crisis. "The suspension of HCR activities will have an inevitable impact on other agencies and non-governmental organisations, among which obviously the ones financed by ECHO," spokesman Filippo di Robilant told a news briefing. Di Robilant said there were still refugees in the area who needed help, including groups from Angola, where a fragile 1994 peace deal that ended two decades of civil war is now threatening to collapse. Those agencies who decided to stay in the region would now be working "under very difficult conditions," di Robilant said. Bonino said "the credibility of the U.N. system as a whole" was being seriously challenged by the developments in the Great Lakes Region. The UNHCR said on Tuesday it could not protect refugees "if the host governments do not abide by the principles and standards of law". Congo expelled 800 Rwandan and Burundian refugees last week in a move which angered the UNHCR. But Kabila said t

hat by sending the refugees back home he was complying with the request of the agency, which he accused of conspiracy. Kabila's government and authorities in Rwanda who backed his overthrow in May of Zaire's late President Mobutu Sese Seko, have been critical of the U.N. over the refugee issue. They accuse the world body of being slow to react to massacres in Rwanda but swift to show concern over the plight of the refugees. More than a million Rwandan Hutus streamed into the former Zaire in 1994, fearing reprisals for the genocide of minority Tutsis by militant Hutus. Some were responsible for the genocide, while others were innocent civilians. A U.N. mission sent to investigate alleged massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees by Kabila's forces has been blocked in Kinshasa for more than two weeks. Kabila's government wants the U.N. to accept its own conditions for the probe.