United Nations

[Merowig]

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=515&ncid=1276&e=10&u=/ap/20040327/ap_on_re_af/un_rwanda">http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... /un_rwanda</a><!-- m -->

Annan Remorseful Over Rwanda Genocide
Fri Mar 26,10:23 PM ET

By NICK WADHAMS, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) again expressed remorse Friday for his and the United Nations (news - web sites)' role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, and asked if the world would respond properly if a similar tragedy strikes.
...
Some of the harshest comments came from retired Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian commander of peacekeepers in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. He questioned why the world spoke of ethnic cleansing in the case of the fighting in the former Yugoslavia, but dismissed the Rwanda genocide as intertribal conflict.
Dallaire, who has said he contemplated suicide after being unable to halt the genocide, said the United Nations and the international community considered the lives of Rwandans far less important than the lives of international soldiers.
...

.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/03/11/un.rwanda.probe.ap/index.html">http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/afric ... index.html</a><!-- m -->

U.N. discovers 'foul-up' in Rwanda probe
Black box sent after 1994 crash found in filing cabinet
Friday, March 12, 2004 Posted: 0238 GMT (1038 HKT)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- In what Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a "first class foul-up," the United Nations said it discovered a black box sent from Rwanda after a 1994 plane crash that unleashed a genocide in the east African nation.

The black box was found in a locked filing cabinet in the U.N. Peacekeeping Department's Air Safety Unit, where it was put by aviation experts who apparently believed its "pristine condition" ruled out the possibility that it came from the downed Falcon 50 aircraft, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Thursday.
...
Annan said he asked U.N. peacekeeping officials to investigate a report last week in the French newspaper Le Monde which said an investigation into the crash had accused the United Nations of obstruction -- because the world body never opened the downed aircraft's black box which was sent to U.N. headquarters in New York.

Le Monde said the Air Safety Office at the U.N. Mission in Rwanda sent the box to New York at the request of the head of the Air Safety Unit.

Eckhard said Thursday that he had denied the existence of a black box and ridiculed the idea after checking with senior U.N. officials.
...