Fiche du document numéro 24550

Num
24550
Date
Wednesday January 15, 2014
Amj
Auteur
Fichier
Taille
84923
Pages
1
Urlorg
Sur titre
Opinion
Titre
Tracing the Rwanda ‘Genocide Fax’
Source
Type
Article de journal
Langue
EN
Citation
Regarding “The shroud over Rwanda’s nightmare” (Opinion, Jan. 10): The crucial January 1994 “genocide fax” to which Michael Dobbs refers — warning of an “anti-Tutsi extermination” plot — was never shared with the United Nations Security Council in any way. But, in his preface to a major volume of Rwanda-related documents published by the United Nations in 1995, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali asserted that the fax actually had been shared with the council.

Since I was president of the Security Council when the fax arrived, I confronted the secretary general on this issue toward the end of 1995. In a subsequent meeting also attended by Chinmaya Garekhan of the United Nations Secretariat, a right-hand man of Mr. Boutros-Ghali’s, the secretary general stuck to his position. In the end, however, Mr. Boutros-Ghali conceded that the Americans, at least, had been informed — which in his view should have been enough as far as the Security Council was concerned. It wasn’t.

Engaging in “what-if” history is rarely fruitful. But if the Security Council had been aware of Brig. Gen. Roméo Dallaire’s views on the impending genocide, it would at least have had a chance to react — and history might have taken a vastly different turn.

Karel Kovanda, Brussels

The writer was the Czech ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997.
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