Rwanda Threatens Darfur Pullout if U.N. Removes General
Thursday, July 24, 2008; Page A11
UNITED NATIONS, July 23 -- Rwanda has warned that it will withdraw its 3,000 peacekeepers from a U.N.-backed mission in the Darfur region of Sudan if the United Nations refuses to retain an alleged Rwandan war criminal as its second-highest-ranking commander there, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.
The Rwandan government rejected the U.N. request, saying that the allegations are groundless and that Karenzi has performed with distinction in Darfur. Rwanda's U.N. envoy, Joseph Nsengimana, sent an unsigned memo to the international body Monday threatening to pull the Rwandan peacekeepers out of Darfur if it proceeded with plans to push Karenzi out, according to a senior U.N. official.
The United States has sided with the Rwandan government, citing concerns that a Rwandan pullout would cripple the already hobbled peacekeeping mission.
The Bush administration maintains that the peacekeepers provide the best hope of protecting Darfur's civilians from a government-backed counterinsurgency that has led to the deaths of more than 300,000 civilians and driven nearly 3 million more from their homes.
But the decision places the administration in the position of backing an alleged war criminal as the second-in-command of a mission that is trying to halt mass murder. And it comes as the administration and the United Nations are supporting international efforts to hold former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir accountable for genocide and crimes against humanity.
"It is dismaying if some governments still believe that they can pick and choose alleged perpetrators of war crimes on the basis of political expediency," said Steve Crawshaw , a U.N. representative for Human Rights Watch.
On Saturday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice instructed Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to inform U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that "the U.S. government urges the renewal of Karenzi's contract without discrimination," according to an American official.
Khalilzad's spokesman, Richard Grenell, declined to say whether the ambassador carried out that order. "I won't elaborate on specific U.S. instructions," Grenell said, adding: "This decision is up to the secretary general. Our concern is for the effective deployment of UNAMID and the full execution of its mandate to protect the people of Darfur."
Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his foreign minister, Rosemary Museminali, threatened a pullout during a July 15 meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer at an African Union summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, if Karenzi's contract wasn't renewed, according to a U.S. official.
Four days earlier, Kagame's U.N. envoy issued a similar warning to Edmond Mulet, the U.N. assistant secretary general for peacekeeping. The envoy told Mulet that genocide revisionists, the Spanish magistrate and human rights groups were conspiring to undermine Rwanda's military leadership, according to a U.N. official.
Senior U.S. officials in Washington and New York differ over the wisdom of pressing the U.N. leadership to renew Karenzi's contract. Last month, Frazer personally appealed to Ban to keep Karenzi, arguing that the United Nations couldn't afford to alienate the Rwandans when they are needed in Darfur. But Khalilzad subsequently told Ban in a private meeting that the U.S. position was not monolithic and that the administration would support any decision Ban made, U.S. and U.N. officials said.
The United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) is plagued by a shortage of troops, trucks, and vital attack and transport helicopters. Fewer than 10,000 of the 26,000 peacekeepers the mission requires have deployed in the country. Seven U.N. peacekeepers, including five Rwandans, were killed in a July 8 ambush in Darfur.
The case against Karenzi dates back to the country's troubled past. In 1994, Rwandan Hutu extremists linked to the government killed more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in one of Africa's bloodiest genocides. Kagame's Tutsi-dominated rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, drove the government from power. The Rwandan leadership considers Karenzi, a top commander in the rebel campaign, a war hero who helped end the genocide.
But Karenzi's record has come under scrutiny since his appointment last year as the second-ranking U.N. peacekeeper in Darfur. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, charged that Rwandan forces under Karenzi's command in a separate conflict, as well as their Ugandan rivals, showed a "blatant disregard for the lives of civilians" during a June 2000 battle in the Congolese town of Kisangani.
U.N. peacekeeping officials last year said they looked into the charges but could not establish whether Karenzi was responsible for war crimes. But the United Nations began pressing this year for Karenzi's departure after a Spanish magistrate, D. Fernando Andreu Merelles, issued an indictment in February against Karenzi and other Rwandan officials for the alleged reprisal killings of ethnic Hutus and several Spanish nationals.
As Rwanda's intelligence chief, Karenzi had command responsibility for a series of political assassinations and massacres, including the "elimination" of Hutu populations in the towns of Nyakinama and Mukingo between 1994 and 1997, according to the indictment.
Karenzi declined to comment.
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