By Anthony Goodman
United Nations - The United Nations, still reproached for its failure to halt the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, is planning an independent inquiry into the way it reacted to the slaughter of about 800,000 people, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the Security Council.
"In view of the enormity of the genocide that occurred in Rwanda ... questions continue to surround the actions of the United Nations immediately before and during the period of the crisis," he said in a letter to council president Qin Huasun of China obtained by Reuters. "It is therefore my intention to set up an independent inquiry into the actions which the United Nations took at that time," Annan said.
An estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered between April and June 1994. The killings began the day after a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot out of the sky on April 6 by a missile as it prepared to land in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. It has been widely reported that Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire, who led a U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda at the time, sent a fax to U.N. headquarters the previous January warning of preparations for mass killings. He was refused permission to disarm the forces preparing the genocide but was authorized to pass on his information to the United States, French and Belgian ambassadors in the Rwandan capital.
The primary purpose of the planned inquiry would be "to establish facts and to draw conclusions as to the response of the Organization to the tragedy," Annan said. The inquiry would be expected to "interview any person having knowledge of the events in question, and would enjoy full access to United Nations records, including internal document and cables," he added. He also intended setting a time limit for the inquiry and to issue its report as a U.N. document. But before proceeding, he asked the Security Council to confirm that it "supports this important undertaking." U.N. sources said council president Qin was proposing a positive response, provided none of the other members of the 15-nation body raised objections by Thursday. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was secretary-general in 1994, was reported not to have informed the council of Dallaire's January 1994 fax. Two weeks after the killings began, the council voted to reduce the U.N. force in Rwanda from 2,000 to about 270. This followed the disarming, torture and murder by soldiers of the presidential guard of 10 Belgian U.N. peacekeepers and Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiwimana, whom they were guarding. As the scale of the killings became apparent, the Security Council in mid-May authorized the dispatch to Rwanda of some 5,500 U.N. troops, but few arrived before the massacres ended when the Uganda-based Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Front took control of the country.
The Organization of African Unity (OAU) began its own inquiry into the Rwanda genocide early this year while France and Belgium have conducted their own investigations.
Annan, who was head of U.N. peacekeeping in 1994, was sharply criticized during a visit to Rwanda in May 1998. In a speech to the Rwandan parliament, he said, "We must and do acknowledge that the world failed Rwanda at that time of evil." The international community and the United Nations "could not muster the political will to confront it. The world must deeply repent this failure," he added.
During a visit to Belgium in January this year, Annan met relatives of the murdered Belgian peacekeepers and came under pressure to establish an independent inquiry into the U.N. performance during the Rwanda genocide.
