As Kagame's Rwanda Accused of Genocide, UN Downplays Threats, MDG Connection
UNITED NATIONS, August 27 -- In the face of Rwanda's push back Friday against a draft UN High Commissioner for Human Rights report accusing it of genocide in the Congo in the 1990s, the UN in New York was in disarray.
UN Spokesman Martin Nesirky said it was “absolutely false” that Rwandan president Paul Kagame threatened to withdrawn his country's troops from the peacekeeping Mission in Darfur, UNAMID.
Inner City Press asked if this threat was made not by Kagame but in a letter by Rwandan foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo -- from whose photo op with Deputy Secretary General Asha Rose Migiro Inner City Press was excluded. Video here, from Minute 10:20.
“There has been correspondence,” Nesirky replied, calling it the “normal practice to not disclose the contents of correspondence in that way.” But Nesirky had so strenuously denied the threat of withdrawing peacekeepers, a threat Rwanda made before, after complaints about one of its general, indicted for war crimes, serving with UNAMID.
The working theory is that one of the 30 authors of the report leaked it, because they sensed or knew that the word genocide would be removed from the final version.
Rwanda, on the other hand, is accusing the UN of more systematically and strategically leaking it, to divert attention from its peacekeeping mission MONUSCO's inaction on mass rapes by the Hutu rebel FDLR.
Inner City Press asked Nesirky about this Rwandan government allegation. Nesirky refused to comment, saying he wasn't aware of the Rwandan government response. Video here, from Minute 14:44.
Given that this UNHCRH report, at least in draft form, accused Kagame's Rwanda of genocide, Inner City Press asked Nesirky if Ban Ki-moon considered this before naming Kagame the co-chair, along with Spain's Zapatero who in turn snubbed Kagame on war crimes grounds, of the UN MDG advocacy group.
“The two are not connected,” Nesirky said. So why not name Omar Al Bashir, one wag asked, to the UN's High Level Panel on Global Sustainability?
Footnote: in fact, on the High Level Panel on Global Sustainability, along with Kevin Rudd, Ban named the head of Research in Motion / BlackBerry, James Lawrence Balsillie.
While one angle involves the countries like Saudi Arabia trying to block BlackBerry service if they are not allowed to unencrypt communications, the other is the opprobrium of the SEC and Canadian government at Ban's sustainable choice Balsillie. Then again, Ban put a convicted corporate criminal from South Korea on the UN Global Compact board. Watch this site.
