The UN court trying the perpetrators of Rwanda's 1994 genocide will hand over about 40 genocide-related cases to national courts in Kigali early next year, the tribunal's chief prosecutor said on Friday.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is under intense pressure to meet a UN deadline to complete investigations by the end of this year and to wrap up all trials by 2008.
"From early next year, we will take the necessary steps to get some of the cases over here," chief prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow told journalists in Kigali after meeting President Paul Kagame.
Some of the cases being transferred by the Tanzanian based tribunal involve suspects who are still at large.
"They may be fugitives, but we will transfer the cases here so in the event they are apprehended, they will have to be sent here," said Jallow, who is on a week-long visit to the tiny central African country.
Jallow, a former Gambian justice minister, also announced the ICTR would start to transfer convicted prisoners to Rwandan jails early next year, in a sign of improving relations between Rwanda and the court.
Rwanda has long criticised the tribunal, which is charged with bringing to justice the military and political masterminds behind the genocide, accusing it of inefficiency and mismanagement despite its multi-million dollar budget.
Some 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered in 1994 by state-sponsored Hutu extremists during 100 days of slaughter.
Based in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, the United Nations tribunal has indicted 81 people for genocide-related crimes. It has convicted 20 people and acquitted three.
The UN tribunal has deals with several European and African countries which have agreed to take prisoners convicted of playing key roles. Rwanda has complained of being excluded from the arrangement.