UN fails to act promptly on Rwanda's genocide: Belgian officer
13/10/2005 15:01
A Belgian army officer has alleged that the United Nations headquarters
failed to act promptly on an informative insight on the potentials of the 1994
Rwandan genocide.
The officer, Colonel Frank Clays, served in the Belgian
troops seconded for the United Nations Mission to Rwanda from October
1993.
He made the allegation while testifying before the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha of northern Tanzania where the UN court
is based, according to reports reaching in Dar Es Salaam on Thursday.
"The
response was that we could not do anything until the broad- based transitional
government was established," said Clays.
The information on the existence of
arms caches in Kigali and a plan to exterminate Tutsis in January 1994 was
provided to the United Nations by a Rwandan informer.
Clays was testifying in
the trial of four former senior Rwandan military officers.
The Belgian army
officer added that he had come to know by word of mouth about the UN response
from the UN department of peacekeeping mission, then headed by the current UN
Secretary General, Kofi Annan.
Clays recalled drafting a fax for the UN
headquarters along with several senior UN peacekeeping officers on January 11 of
1994 after he had gathered the information from Jean Pierre Turatsinze during a
meeting with the informer the previous day.
Augustin Ndindiliyamana, Augustin
Bizimungu, Francois-Xavier Nzuwonemeye and Innocent Sagahutu are jointly accused
of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The trial of the four is
known as Military II.
All the four former Rwandan military officers have
pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The defense team is challenging the
authenticity of the fax that was presented to the UN court during testimony.
Xinhua
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