Three senior Belgian army officers have been stripped of their right to command troops because of an incident in April 1994, in which ten of their men died while on United Nations peacekeeping duties in Rwanda.

The Belgian defence minister, Jean-Paul Poncelet, said the negligence of the three officers -- one colonel and two majors -- had contributed to the deaths of the ten paratroopers during an attack by Hutus in which the Rwandan prime minister, Agathe Uwilinginyimana, was also killed.

Her death was one of the key incidents at the start of a period of mass killings in Rwanda in which more than half-a-million people died.

A report by the Belgian senate last year concluded that the three officers, and two others, made errors of judgement in their response to the events -- although it did not make specific charges.