NAIROBI, Nov 28 (Reuters) - A U.N tribunal reduced the jail terms on Wednesday of three Rwandan journalists convicted of fanning the 1994 genocide by inciting Hutu extremists to slaughter Tutsis.

The Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2003 handed defendants Ferdinand Nahimana and Hassan Ngeze life imprisonment sentences while a third one, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, got 35 years.

"There have been some reversals," said Timothy Gallimore, spokesman of the Tanzanian-based ICTR, without explaining why the sentences had been cut back.

Nahimana's and Ndeze's sentences were cut to 30 and 35 years respectively while Barayagwiza got his reduced by three years, Gallimore said.

Nahimana and Barayagwiza were founding members of Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines (RTLM) while Ngeze owned the Kangura, an extremist Hutu newspaper.

RTLM, established in April 1993, became known as "hate radio" and many of its journalists were accused of preaching ethnic hatred and encouraging Hutus, who make up about 85 percent of the population, to massacre Tutsis.

The ICTR is prosecuting the leaders of the genocide in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in one of the worst bouts to bloodletting in Africa's history.

The court has sentenced 29 of the architects of the slaughter that took place in 100 days but is still hunting 14 fugitives. (Reporting by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura, editing by Wangui Kanina and Elizabeth Piper)

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