Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un2karenzi121208.html
UNITED NATIONS, December 12 -- The UN system's approach to Rwanda was shown this week to be in disarray. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, Hassan B. Jallow, told the Press on Friday that his Office had been asked about the service with the UN Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur by Rwandan General Karenzi Karake, indicted for war crimes by a judge in Spain. Jallow said his answer had been that he had no case against Karenzi, who as a consequence is still in his UN job.
But on December 9 in the same room, High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay had told the Press that her Office had raised issues of war crimes by Karenzi Karake while with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RFP), well as getting several Nepali generals removed from peacekeeping missions due to their involvement in disappearances. Inner City Press had asked Ms. Pillay what the UN does about abuses among its peacekeepers, and was told on December 10 that further information was being sought from Ms. Pillay, which two days later has not been provided.
So the UN system's top human rights official is taking credit for raising war crimes issues about a top UN peacekeeping general, while a top UN system prosecutor first says he doesn't recognize the general's name, then says he cleared him.
Meanwhile, the UN's Congo sanctions committee has issued a report linking the RPF-successor Rwandan government with the rebels in Congo led by Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda, while saying on the other hand that the Congolese government army is in league with the Hutu FDLR rebels.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/un2karenzi121208.html
