United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon kicked off a landmark trip to Rwanda on Tuesday with a visit to the genocide memorial, amid simmering resentment over the world body’s failure to prevent the 1994 massacres.
Ban, who arrived late on Monday with his wife and a large delegation, paid homage to the victims of the massacres, which left about 800 000 people dead, mainly from the Tutsi minority of President Paul Kagame.
The secretary general laid a wreath on a mass grave where 250 000 people were buried and observed a long moment of silence in respect for the dead.
Ban was also due to hold talks with Kagame on Tuesday as well as with several other officials before flying on to Addis Ababa for an African Union heads of state summit. He also planned to deliver a speech before Parliament.
His spokesperson, Michele Montas, described the trip as being akin to ”a pilgrimage … a way of paying homage to a country that has recovered from an extremely painful period”.
The last time a UN secretary general visited Rwanda was in 2001, when Ban’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, held talks in Kigali. Annan had also visited the small Central African nation in 1998.
Resentment towards the UN for failing to prevent the genocide is still rife in Rwanda, and Annan had on several occasions admitted the world body’s failure to take appropriate action.
”Neither the UN, nor the Security Council, nor member states in general, nor the international media, paid enough attention to the gathering signs of disaster,” said Annan, in a 2004 speech marking the genocide’s 10th anniversary.
He was head of UN peacekeeping at the time of the genocide, during which 800 000 people were massacred in the space of a few weeks.
A UN peacekeeping force was deployed in Rwanda in 1994 but it failed to stop the killing due to the absence of reinforcements, which required a UN Security Council vote.
Ban was also expected to discuss the alarming situation in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as the latest developments in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, Montas said. — AFP
