Clinton says the world failed Rwanda victims
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Your support makes all the difference.PRESIDENT Bill Clinton told survivors of Rwanda's 1994 genocide yesterday that the international community must share the blame for failing to stop the slaughter of up to one million people.
"We did not act quickly enough after the killing began," Mr Clinton said after six survivors of the slaughter described their travails to him privately in graphic detail. "We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide."
Mr Clinton, on a 12-day tour of Africa that began on Monday, told a carefully vetted audience at the airport in Rwanda's capital, Kigali: "I have come to pay my respects to all who suffered and all who perished."
The terrible events of 1994 are still fresh in the collective memory, and the United States President showed a grasp of events that impressed his audience. "We felt that this man understood very well the suffering of the Rwandan people. In a way his message was 'don't despair. the world is behind you, the US is behind you to bring you back to a certain degree of humanity and to the dignity you have lost'," a genocide survivor said.
"In Rwanda, we must hold accountable all those who would abuse human rights, whether insurgents or soldiers," Mr Clinton said. Both the Rwandan government army and the Hutu militiamen they are fighting in the north- west of the country have been accused of human rights abuses. US support for an international early warning system to detect areas where conflicts might deteriorate into mass killings was promised, as was a $30m (pounds 18.4m) initiative to help improve the justice systems in Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Mr Clinton won loud applause when he spoke of the international community's failure to stop the genocide. He appealed to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, to speed up its prosecutions of genocide suspects - some 120,000 are being held.
An announcement just before his arrival that he would not be laying a wreath at a hurriedly constructed genocide memorial just 50 yards from the airport terminal caused indignation. White House security people were not prepared to allow their boss to put so much as a toe outside the airport. But as Air Force One took off at the end of his two-and-a-half-hour visit, the consensus among officials and survivors was that the visit had been worthwhile.
The Rwandan President, Pasteur Bizimungu, said that he sensed a "new beginning for Africa. Your presence is an indication of this new hope for the African people."
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