Citation
UNITED NATIONS, April 22 (Reuter) - Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali would have preferred a beefed-up U.N. operation in Rwanda
but realised the Security Council felt differently, his spokesman said
Friday.
The council voted late Thursday to cut back the beleaguered
peacekeeping force, once at 2,500, to about 270 to help negotiate a
truce in the country's bloody civil war.
The secertary-general apparently was smarting from continued criticism
by he Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and humanitarian groups that
the United Nations was deserting thousands of Rwandans it was guarding
around the country.
Before the vote, Boutros-Ghali had proposed that the force should
either by substantially strengthened to restore order in the central
African country or be reduced to the bare minimum. But he did not give
his preference.
Nevertheless, his spokesman Joe Sills said he presented the options in
the order he would have preferred them. He would have preferred an
increase in the U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda,
known as UNAMIR.
But it was clear to everyone there was not enough support on the
council to have that happen,
Sills added.
Sills said it would have been impossible for the current force to have
dealt with the crisis on a continuing basis.
A spokesman for Doctors Without Borders told reporters Friday that only
his group and the International Committee of the Red Cross -- and not
the U.N. relief agencies -- had substantial relief operations in
Rwanda.
The spokesman, Dr Alain Destexhe, contended that Rwanda was not Somalia
and foreigners were not targets, except for Belgians, the former
colonial rulers.
We would like the humanitarian part of the United Nations much more
active,
he said.
The carnage followed the April 6 downing of a plane carrying Rwandan
President Juvenal Habyarimana and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of
neighbouring Burundi as they were about to land in Kigali, the capital.
Immediately after the presidents' death, the Hutu army and militia
engaged in targeted killings of political opponents of the regime, both
Hutu and minority Tutsi tribe activists, including Rwanda's prime
minister.
Human Rights Watch, which said earlier that as many as 100,000 people
may have been killed, said Friday that 20,000 to 25,000 Rwandans under
U.N. protection would face almost certain death.
The mass slaughter being carried out by the presidential guard and
government-trained militias is now directed almost exclusively at
members of the Tutsi minority group, and amounts to a campaign of
genocide,
it said in a statement.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
