FBIS4-28901
"dreas114_m_94001"
FBIS-EAS-94-114
Daily Report
12 Jun 1994
Thailand
U.S. Blamed for Delay in Helping Rwanda
U.S. Blamed for Delay in Helping Rwanda
BK1306092894 Bangkok THE SUNDAY NATION in English 12 Jun 94
p A6
BK1306092894
Bangkok THE SUNDAY NATION
English
BFN
[Editorial: "US Drags Its Feet as Ethnic Madness Grips
Rwanda"]
[Text] After months of dithering over what to do about the
orgy of tribal bloodletting in Rwanda, the United Nations
finally gave the go-ahead late Wednesday for the deployment of
5,500 peacekeepers to guard aid convoys and protect civilians in
special humanitarian zones inside the country.
Almost immediately, the governments of Ghana and Zimbabwe
announced they were ready to deploy troops but the United States
says it will be weeks before it can send long-promised
equipment. This delay is intolerable. Each day that help fails
to arrive, more Rwandans are being slaughtered and the food and
health crisis gripping the country worsens.
On Friday, the head of the UN operation in Rwanda, General
Romeo Dallaire said the deployment of more UN reinforcements was
"already weeks late."
Priests massacred
He said that he had been receiving desperate calls for help
daily, including one from the archbishop of Kigali before he and
other 12 priests were massacred last week. But with few troops
and limited equipment, the general said he was powerless to save
them from death squads.
Estimates of the number of people butchered in the small
African state range from 200,000 to half a million but even
these horrific figures may be under-representing the scope of
the mayhem in the country.
In the black hole of government-held land to the west of the
country, where Hutu death squads are continuing their rampage
against the minority Tutsis, about two million refugees have
"vanished." Aid groups which expected them to pour across the
border into Burundi say they have simply not turned up.
Washington must take much of the blame for the tardiness of
UN action. It repeatedly blocked earlier efforts to deploy UN
peacekeepers, demanding that a ceasefire be agreed first.
The U.S. position sought to restrict the reinforcements to
operating on border areas. The new resolution allows the mainly
African extra peacekeepers to go to the capital Kigali, if
possible, and fan out through the country to places where
civilians are most at risk.
Washington's position has shown an appalling disregard for
the lives of Rwandans.
Even as late as Friday, the White House was still trying to
avoid categorizing the Rwanda killings as genocide out of fear
the term might incite public calls for greater U.S. action.
A State Department spokeswoman told a disbelieving press
conference: "Clearly not all of the killings that have taken
place in Rwanda are killings to which you might apply that label
(genocide)."
Slashing and hacking
How the Clinton administration can classify the slashing and
hacking of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis to death as anything
but genocide is bewildering.
Nearly two million Tutsis, including an estimated 500,000
unaccompanied children whose parents have either been killed or
lost, are displaced and thousands are trapped in hostile zones
under the constant fear of death.
UN officials says they are starting to see children in
Kigali
with bloated bellies, an early sign of starvation.
Hunger-related deaths have already been reported in the south.
It is imperative that the US waste no more time in
dispatching the equipment the UN needs to restrain the ethnic
madness in Rwanda.
Washington must also bring whatever diplomatic pressure it
can on Uganda, the main backer of the predominantly-Tutsi Rwanda
Patriotic Front (RPF). Unless the RPF halts their offensive and
agrees to a ceasefire, it will be difficult for the UN to make
arrangements for the care of refugees.