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Le Monde criticizes U.N. over Rwanda inquiry
PARIS (Reuters) - French newspaper Le Monde took a new swipe at the United Nations Friday over accusations that the world body obstructed a French investigation into an air crash that triggered the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
The U.N. initially ridiculed a report by Le Monde earlier this week that a "black box" flight recorder from the plane shot down by a rocket in April 1994, killing the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, had been sent to U.N. headquarters in New York.
But a U.N. spokesman acknowledged Thursday that a black box possibly linked to the crash had turned up in a filing cabinet. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said it was a "first class foul-up" but denied there had been any attempt at a cover-up.
Le Monde said the affair was either an "unbelievable blunder" or "a scandal with consequences that are hard to assess."
It repeated allegations that the United Nations obstructed a six-year inquiry by French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who was asked to investigate by relatives of the plane's French crew.
"In Judge Bruguiere's investigation, the references to inaction, even obstruction, by the U.N. are numerous," Le Monde said.
The killing of about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus by the French-backed Hutu leadership in power in Rwanda at the time is a major embarrassment for the United Nations, because U.N. peacekeepers failed to prevent the slaughter.
It is also a personal embarrassment for Annan, who led the peacekeeping operation at the time.
Bruguiere faulted the United Nations for failing to open its own investigation into the plane's downing and trying to prevent the truth from coming out, Le Monde reported.
It quoted Bruguiere's report as saying Paul Kagame, now Rwanda's president but then leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, ordered the plane to be shot down with President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian leader Cyprien Ntaryamira on board.
"General Paul Kagame... is identified as the main decision-maker in the attack," Le Monde said, adding that the report found 10 of his senior officers were also involved.
The Rwandan government has denied the report as "shameful and baseless."
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
