Global Policy Forum

By Steven Edwards

United Nations - Madeleine Albright, the U.S. secretary of state, has refused to appear before a United Nations-mandated independent inquiry probing why the world body failed to prevent the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the National Post has learned.

Ms. Albright was the U.S. ambassador to the UN at the time of the genocide and can provide key information about high-level decisions that led the U.S. to call on the UN Security Council to dramatically reduce the number of UN peacekeepers in Rwanda shortly after the killing began in earnest in April. Because she represented the United States on the Security Council, she can also shed light on the degree to which the UN's peacekeeping department in New York kept that body informed about the deteriorating security situation in Rwanda in the months before the genocide.

However, she and members of her senior staff, including Susan Rice, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa both at the time of the genocide and now, have declined invitations from Ingvar Carlsson, a former Swedish prime minister who is chairing the inquiry, to meet with him and his two fellow panelists when they visit Washington this week.

Their decision has angered Cynthia McKinney, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a member of the House international relations committee (HIRC), who has written to Bill Clinton, the U.S. president, asking that he order the two women and other key members of his administration to co-operate with the inquiry. Recalling that members of the State Department also failed to appear at the 1996 HIRC hearing into the genocide, she tells the president: "Once again, the State Department is attempting to hide from public scrutiny of its handling of the Rwandan genocide. "If the State Department should continue to stonewall and refuse to assist the critical examination of the United Nations' handling of the Rwandan genocide, then I may have to seriously reconsider the role the HIRC will play in discovering what the administration knew and when it knew it."

Alison Des Forges, author of a 770-page report on the genocide for Human Rights Watch, told the National Post: "If the inquiry's final report does not contain satisfactory information about U.S. actions at the time of the genocide we will use Ms. Albright's refusal as a reason for demanding a U.S. inquiry."

The Security Council authorized the inquiry in the spring at the behest of Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, who was head of UN peacekeeping operations in 1994. Central to the inquiry is what happened to faxes warning of the coming catastrophe that Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian in charge of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda, sent to General Maurice Baril, then Mr. Annan's military advisor, now chief of staff of the Canadian Armed Forces. Phil Reeker, a State Department spokesman, said officials from what is called the "bureau level" will attend the inquiry. None will be above the rank of deputy assistant secretary of state, he said, and they may even be drawn from a lower level in the department. "They asked for a briefing of U.S. policy towards Rwanda at that time," said Mr. Reeker. "We support the inquiry. In that spirit we have agreed to do the briefing."

Asked why Ms. Albright would not be appearing, Mr. Reeker said: "She is secretary of state now. She would routinely delegate meetings to officials." A spokeswoman for Don Payne, another Democratic member of the House, who took part in a U.S. fact-finding mission to Rwanda as the killing continued in 1994, said Ms. Albright could not appear before the inquiry because she has little to report. "They didn't have a policy at the time, so what does she have to uphold?" said Cherise Glassman.

Once the genocide started, some in the White House -- still mindful of the death of 18 U.S. Rangers late in 1993 during a peacekeeping mission in Somalia -- favoured pulling out all 2,500 UN peacekeeping troops from Rwanda. Others, Ms. Albright among them, thought their numbers should be cut to 270, which is what the Security Council ultimately ordered.