UN admits Rwanda genocide failure –
April 15, 2000
The UN could have done more to help Rwanda
The United Nations Security Council has explicitly accepted
responsibility for failing to prevent the 1994 genocide in
Rwanda in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed.
In the first formal response to a report critical of the UN's
role, council members acknowledged its main finding that
their governments lacked the political will to stop the
massacres.
Most of the 2,500 UN peacekeepers
in Rwanda at the time were
withdrawn after the deaths of 10
Belgian soldiers.
Preventing
another round
of genocidal
At a council debate, the Canadian
violence in
Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy,
said none present could look back
central Africa is
without remorse and sadness at the one of the UN's
failure to help the people of Rwanda
greatest
in their time of need.
challenges
"The unchecked brutality of the
genocidaires made a mockery, once
again, of the pledge 'never again,'"
he said, referring to the promise
made after the Holocaust.
US Ambassador
Richard
Holbrooke
The council stopped short an all-out
apology similar to the one delivered
by Belgian Prime Minister Guy
Verhofstadt one week ago in Kigali.
Instead, the 15 council members
focused on the lessons to be learned
from their failure to act, particularly
in Africa where wars continue to
rage.
US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke
said: "The prevention of another
Victims' remains are still
round of genocidal violence in
being found in places like
central Africa is one of the core
this cesspit
elements of US policy in the Great
Lakes, and is one of the United Nations' greatest
challenges."
"In the days ahead, how we act to
help bring peace to Congo will be
the best evidence that we've
learned the lessons of our past
failures," he said.
Rwanda's UN Ambassador, Joseph
Mutaboba, welcomed the report and
its recommendations but said the
council could do more. "It's never to
late to make things right," he said.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,
Kofi Annan did not pass on
who was head of UN peacekeeping
warnings from Canadian
operations in 1994, commissioned
General Romeo Dallaire
the report and was out for criticism
for not passing on warnings about the impending genocide.
Mr Annan said he fully accepted the report's conclusions.