NZ in hot seat over genocide in Rwanda

A UN mission was kept small and cheap while up to a million Rwandans died. GEOFF CUMMING reports on a horrific new book.

It is April 1994, and the world remains impassive as thousands of Rwandan Tutsis are massacred every day.

As the genocide unfolds, New Zealand is at the helm of the United Nations Security Council.

But the efforts of New Zealand ambassador Colin Keating, the council president for that fateful month, cannot push the council into action.

During April and May, up to a million Tutsis are slaughtered by Hutu extremists.

A new book on Rwanda, A People Betrayed, lifts the lid on the international community's failure to prevent the genocide. In it, British journalist Linda Melvern outlines how the slaughter was aided and abetted by international indifference, loans and weapons deals.

The book caused a stir on its release in Britain this month by revealing that Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the UN Secretary-General at the time, had previously helped broker an arms deal between his native Egypt and the Rwandan Government.

A UN report published last year concluded that once the killings started, Boutros-Ghali should have done more to argue the case for reinforcing the peacekeepers in Rwanda.

As the genocide started, he continued a three-week tour of Europe.

Drawing on leaked documents, Melvern presents a damning indictment of the Security Council's inertia, despite advance warnings of the genocide and increasingly desperate pleas from the UN mission head in Rwanda, Romeo Dallaire.

One of a very few to emerge with any credit is Mr Keating, now Secretary for Justice in Wellington.

Minutes of secret security council meetings show ambassadors complained about inadequate briefings on what was taking place in Rwanda. While a Tutsi-backed army was threatening to end Hutu oppression by waging civil war, Hutu extremists plotted the extermination of Tutsi civilians and sympathisers.

But when it began, the slaughter was portrayed as a civil war rather than genocide - a distinction which delayed UN intervention.

Melvern's book is studded with harrowing accounts of atrocities spreading while the security council behaved as if in a vacuum.

In one, a female survivor recounts being forced to dig graves to bury men killed by Hutu militia and then to throw in children.

"I will never forget the sight of my son pleading with me not to bury him alive ... He kept trying to come out and was beaten back. And we had to keep covering the pit with earth until ... there was no movement left."

Rwanda was inconvenient for the UN. It was immersed in the Bosnia, Iraq and Cambodia crises and a dozen other peacekeeping missions.

Its peacekeeping budget had ballooned to $US3 billion.

The United States, chastened by its 1993 intervention in Somalia and the loss of 18 troops, owed the international body $900 million. It was decided that the Rwanda mission should remain small and cheap, a decision Britain also supported.

A third major power, France, maintained close links with the Rwandan regime, supplying arms and training its soldiers. And in June 1994, New Zealand refused to back France's plan to rush 2000 of its troops to the area.

At the time, the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front, whose Tutsi tribe supporters were the main victims of the slaughter, was fiercely opposed to French intervention, which it said covered a hidden agenda of French support for the majority Hutus.

And in what Mr Keating calls a terrible historical accident, Rwanda had a seat on the Security Council as the slaughter was taking place. Its ambassador promoted the Hutu Government line that any killings were the result of the civil war.

The international community pinned its faith on an accord, signed in August 1993, to end the hostilities. It promised power-sharing under a transitional Government and wide-ranging reforms.

But while assuring the world of their commitment to peace, extremists in the Government and military were preparing the genocide.

Arms deals were done with Egyptian, Chinese and South African dealers. The World Bank knew of the militarisation, but only once was aid suspended.

Machetes, hoes and axes were stockpiled for the population to use as weapons. Fear and hatred of Tutsis was spread on the radio.

In January, news of the stockpiling and massacre plans leaked out. Dallaire, head of the UN's small presence in Rwanda, sought permission to seize the weapons, but the secretariat prescribed continued diplomacy.

Yesterday, Mr Keating recalled for the Herald his concern at the secretariat's withholding information from council members.



The trigger for the extermination was the assassination of President Habyarimana and several of his advisers on their return from a summit with African leaders in Tanzania on April 6.

The president's plane was shot down by missiles at Kigali airport. Eighteen Belgian peacekeepers were taken hostage at the airport and later killed, prompting Belgium to withdraw its forces.

Mr Keating says that although the genocide was happening within 24 hours, it was at least 10 days before the Security Council realised what was happening.

He obtained the true picture only after arranging daily meetings with representatives of the Red Cross and Medicins Sans Frontieres, and from media reports of massacres.

By this time, the US and others wanted the UN to withdraw from Rwanda. "You could describe it as a collective failure of political will," he said. "It was scary."

New Zealand was among the first countries to push for a peacekeeping presence and was not about to let go.

Mr Keating reminded the American that peacekeeping should not be limited to white countries in Europe or to their sphere of direct interest.

"The notion of abandoning the Rwandese was just something we couldn't stomach and which had to be stood up against."

On April 29, with New Zealand's one-month tenure as council president nearly up, Mr Keating moved to have the genocide acknowledged.

"It was important to name the evil that was taking place. There had to be acceptance that this was not a civil war but systematic slaughter.

Once the problem was named, he believed, "international public opinion ... would prevail."

But use of the g-word in his proposed presidential statement drew objections from Britain, China and others. After more than 12 hours of behind-doors discussions, the council was deadlocked.

It took an act of brinksmanship to have a compromise statement voted on. Mr Keating threatened a public vote, which would expose each country's position to scrutiny.

While avoiding the g-word, the eventual statement reminded Rwanda that the killing of an ethnic group was a crime punishable by international law.

Mr Keating ended his tenure hopeful that within a few weeks the UN mission would be sufficiently strengthened to halt the killing.

But it was too little too late. It would be weeks before Dallaire's hopelessly inadequate force was bolstered - and then only by the arrival of the French, who went to protect retreating Hutus.

New Zealand was one of a handful of countries to oppose French intervention, and Mr Keating says that decision was politically fraught.

"Our position was proved right and, I think, attracted an enormous amount of respect for New Zealand.

"One of the sadnesses of the kind of democracy that works in any international organisation is that there are very few countries that are free to speak their mind."

Asked if the UN had learned from the episode, he pointed to East Timor as an instance where intervention, even if it was late, saved many East Timorese and allowed most survivors to return home.

But, he says, the UN has a long way to go, despite reforms in the past two years. Years of operating in deficit have eroded its capability.

The ability of the five permanent members - the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia - to veto decisions affecting their interests remains a millstone.

The UN's regard for neutrality and sovereignty is not always justified, says Mr Keating. "When you are faced with an unspeakable evil, such as the genocide in Rwanda, you have to take sides."

Despite his frustrations, he hopes it will not be too long before New Zealand is back on the international stage in the Security Council. Our two-year term in 1993 and 1994 demonstrated that we could play an effective part in resolving issues around the world.

Our willingness to send peacekeepers to troublespots and clashes with the US over Rwanda and Somalia helped build credibility. We argued with European powers in advocating the use of airstrikes in Bosnia.

"You became deeply involved in brokering solutions which other countries don't quickly forget.

"I know it contributed enormously to New Zealand's reputation and mana and the benefits are still being reaped from that kind of independent, principled position."

* Linda Melvern, who worked for four years on the British Sunday Times, spent six years working on the story of the Rwanda genocide. Her book will be launched in Wellington next week.