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At UN, Ms. Albright Talks Genocide While Dodging on
Rwanda Votes of 1994
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
December 9 -- The U.S. is said to
be a forgiving country, a land of re-invention of self. How else to
explain
Madeleine Albright, who in 1994 while serving on the Security Council
pushed to
remove UN peacekeepers from Rwanda during the genocide, showing up
Tuesday at
the UN along with William Cohen as experts to advise Barack Obama on
the
prevention of genocide?
Certainly,
a person who has erred is in a good position to help successors avoid
the same
mistake. But Ms. Albright's introductory remarks to the Press did not
mention
the word Rwanda. So Inner City Press asked her, as the U.S. Permanent
Representative during the Rwanda genocide, what lesson she has taken
from it,
and from the Council's dealings with the Democratic Republic of the
Congo?
Video here,
from Minute 10:44.
Ms.
Albright could only say that people had been distracted by Bosnia and
Haiti
and, she said, Somalia "where the Black Hawk helicopter had been shot
down." We were doing things, she said. But she did not address the
connection, that following the deaths of American service people in
Somalia,
President Bill Clinton decided that not only no Americans, but no other
peacekeepers should take action in Rwanda.
Belgian
peacekeepers had been shot, and Belgium wanted to leave. Today, Belgium
says it
is interested in sending peacekeepers to its former colony the Congo,
but won't
because the European Union doesn't agree. The EU is deploying in
Kosovo. What
has been learned?
Madeleine Albright at the UN, again and again
Here is Ms. Albright's answer to Inner City
Press' question:
"I do think there are various
aspects of the tragedy of Rwanda that obviously weigh very heavily on
all of us
that had anything to do with it. And I do think there are lessons there
that
have been incorporated into some of these suggestions.
"I think that it is
obviously always easier for people to make judgments about what
decisions were
taken at the time when there was a different level of information
available,
which is something I tell my students all the time, but I do think what
was
missing was enough information coming in, looking at patterns, early
warning
signs, and anything in the US government that actually was a strong
interagency
process that had people watching for what was going on, and that's why
we've suggested
an atrocities prevention committee that would meet on a monthly basis
and would
be available, why we have suggested that the National Intelligence
Estimate
involve intelligence across the board ...
"The other part that I think is truly
germane and why you need people spending time on this, for those of you
who
were here during that period, you know that it isn't as if we weren't
doing
anything. We had been in Somalia, the Black Hawk helicopter had been
shot down,
we were in Bosnia, we were looking at Haiti."
News
analysis: rather than "never again," this is a recipe for "again
and again."
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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Other,
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in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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