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UN HEAD CALLS FOR INQUIRY INTO RWANDAN MASSACRE FIASCO

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 23 (LSN) - Two months after Belgian political leaders blamed UN leader Kofi Annan for the Rwandan genocide costing over 800,000 lives, Annan has called for a full inquiry into the matter. The National Post reports today that the UN Secretary General is "promising to surrender all documents, internal memos, and cables."

As the Rwandan crisis began to unfold, Canadian General and leader of the UN forces in Rwanda, Romeo Dallaire, discovered information on planned massacres in the region. The information led him to fax a plan to UN high command, which, according to military analysts, would have averted the Rwandan massacre and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, then head of UN peacekeeping operations, was informed of Dallaire's plan in January of 1994 and a reply forbidding Dallaire to take action to halt the genocide was sent from Annan's office.

International analysts critical of the UN are suspicious of the UN's sudden willingness to initiate such an inquiry since during earlier International Criminal Tribunals open testimony by General Dallaire was prohibited.

In an effort to cover up the UN's complicity in the Rwandan genocide Annan ordered Dallaire to remain silent about the UN's refusal to go ahead with Dallaire's plan. In a UN International Tribunal case last year, the UN only reluctantly gave Dallaire permission to give restricted testimony at the trial even though the defendant's lawyers said Dallaire's testimony was "of capital importance to his case." Presiding Judge Laity Kama of Senegal repeatedly reminded the defence attorney to respect UN restrictions preventing Dallaire from discussing confidential documents, including whether he had warned superiors of the Hutu plot to exterminate Tutsis.

Also in 1997, Annan refused to let Dallaire testify before the Belgian parliamentary panel investigating the events in Rwanda because he did not believe it was "in the interest of the organization."

Story from the National Post.

For more information see LifeSite's Dec 10, 1998 Special Report at:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/1998/dec/981210b.html

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