Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- March 26, 1998
Clinton offers another apology
He rebukes world for Rwanda deaths
By Warren P. Strobel
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
KIGALI, Rwanda
President Clinton, who opposed international intervention to stop the genocide that killed 1 million people here, yesterday acknowledged somberly that the world failed Rwanda and vowed it would never happen again.
In his second apology in two days, Mr. Clinton said, "The international community, together with nations in Africa, ... did not act quickly enough after the killing began."
"We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become safe haven for the killers. We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide."
Later in Entebbe, Uganda, the president and seven African leaders agreed to work to banish genocide from the continent and bring killers to justice. They also signed a pact endorsing Mr. Clinton's vision of a new relationship based on trade and a deepened respect for human rights.
"Human rights are not bestowed on the basis of wealth or race, on gender or ethnicity, on culture or regions," he said. "They are the birthright of all men and women everywhere."
Mr. Clinton's stop in Rwanda was brief but symbolic. At Kigali's airport, he met with six survivors of
the slaughter and heard harrowing tales of entire families murdered and neighbors refusing to hide neighbors from the killers.
The president seemed moved as he heard stories like that of Josephine Murebwayire, who hid with others in a seminary. When a priest refused to turn the hunted over to soldiers, they fatally shot him and then used machetes to cut down 350 to 400 people, including Mrs. Murebwayire's husband, six children and her two brothers.
"We cannot change the past. But we can and must do everything in our power to help you build a future without fear, and full of hope," Mr. Clinton said.
Mr. Clinton announced several steps to that end, including $30 million to help strengthen judicial and policing systems; pressure on an international war-crimes tribunal that has moved slowly; and, perhaps most important, an initiative to alert leaders when genocidal violence appears imminent.
"It may seem strange to you here," he said, "but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror."
Critics charge world leaders knew but could not summon the political will to act. Despite the rhetoric, neither Mr. Clinton nor his aides could offer concrete assurances that, if ethnic slaughter breaks out anew, leaders will not dawdle as they did in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and elsewhere.
Still, Rwandans, while waiting to see what Mr. Clinton's visit brings in the future, expressed gratitude for his admission of the world's failure four years ago. They also appreciated it when he agreed with Rwandan President Pasteur Bizimungu that the genocide resulted not from ancient tribal differences, but from a "clear and conscious decision" by extremist political leaders.
"Having a leader of the whole world coming to small Rwanda, it is a big difference," said Tito Rutaremara, who said he survived political violence in 1959, 1962, 1967 and 1994. But the United States "should have stopped the genocide."
His visit came a day after Mr. Clinton all but apologized for U.S. slavery in Uganda, saying, "European-Americans received the fruits of the slave." Just two days before that, Uganda's president said such an apology would be "rubbish.
"If anyone should apologize it should be the African chiefs [who were] capturing their own people and selling them," President Yoweri Museveni said.
Mr. Clinton's three-and-a-half-hour side trip to Kigali came on a day when he put aside the sunny optimism about Africa's future that had dominated his 11-day mission to the continent thus far. Instead, he explored ways to stop or prevent the violence, guerrilla wars and human rights violations that have riven nations and destabilized governments across East and Central Africa.
The killings in Rwanda have been called the swiftest mass murder of the 20th century. In three months, extremist members of the ethnic Hutu majority, working from lists drawn up in advance, used clubs and machetes to kill 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus accused of collaborating with them.
The United States, traumatized by the death of 18 U.S. soldiers in the Somalia peacekeeping mission the previous October, had no stomach for a risky new intervention in Africa. Mr. Clinton authorized U.S. humanitarian assistance only after Tutsi rebels ousted the government, sparking a massive flow of refugees into Zaire and other neighboring countries.
Rwanda remains unstable today, as groups responsible for the genocide carry out attacks in the country's northwest. Mr. Clinton did not venture outside the airport and, on Secret Service recommendations, did not visit a nearby memorial to the genocide victims that houses several skulls and the skeleton of an infant.
But he heard from 31-year-old Gloriosa Uwimpuhwe, who hid under a bed to escape death and then fled from house to house, being chased away because residents feared they would be killed if they harbored her.
Mrs. Uwimpuhwe, who now works in a Catholic Relief Services peace-building program, lost both parents and many other relatives in 1994 but said she hopes Mr. Clinton's visit helps prompt reconciliation.
"I feel that ... after his visit we're going to sit again, discuss our problem, discuss our history and so on, but in way that we are more confident," she said.
Returning to Uganda, where he began the day, the president held a first-ever summit with the leaders of Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) to promote regional stability and economic development.
The United States has been nudging leaders such as Kenya's Daniel arap Moi and Congo's Laurent Kabila, who took power by force last year, to make room for genuine political opposition.
In a 15-minute one-on-one meeting, Mr. Clinton told Mr. Kabila, "We want you to succeed. But you have to help us help you" by taking steps that would show evidence of a move toward democracy, said National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger.
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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