New World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz on Thursday said the international community could do more to help Darfur, the troubled region of Western Sudan.
”There’s some progress made; I’m sure that more can be done”, he said in response to reporters’ questions before leaving the Rwandan capital Kigali for South Africa on the fourth and final leg of his maiden African tour as chief of the bank.
Emphasising that a large part of what now needs to be done in Darfur is economic development, Wolfowitz said he was ”quite certain that the bank has a role to play” in the reconstruction of this region of western Sudan, calling the situation that prevails there currently a ”post-genocide situation”.
”Genocide is something that has very very deep effects on societies … for a long time”, the bank’s new chief said.
”I think that the international community is doing more [in Darfur] than in some cases in the past and that is a good thing”, he added, in a reference to the failure of the international community to intervene to stop the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
On Thursday, touring a genocide memorial at the start of his two-day visit to Rwanda, Wolfowitz said the international community ”bears enormous responsibility for having looked the other way” during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Given this failure to intervene, the international community has a ”special responsibility” to support post-genocide Rwanda.
”I think that this international community has a special responsibility to support this country when it seems to be on the right path”, he said.
Asked by reporters why Rwanda continues to receive so much aid when many observers accuse it of violating international law by making incursions into the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) [a charge denied by Kigali], Wolfowitz made only the mildest condemnation of the alleged incursions.
”We need to understand what the problem is and the real problem is the killers [Rwandan Hutu militiamen who took part in the Rwandan genocide] who are living in the Congo”, he said, adding: ”I’m not saying that incursions are the good way to solve it, but we need to find a solution because until this problem is solved there’s going to be instability”. ‒Sapa-AFP