UN was warned about Rwanda, says report

A report on the genocide in Rwanda released Wednesday says a French humanitarian mission was really an attempt to prop up a genocidal government.

It's nearly five years since a Hutu-led regime launched an ethnic bloodbath with killed 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis. The report blames the international community's inaction.

Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues spent four years preparing the 800-page report. At a press conference in Paris, members of the groups highlighted one conclusion which clearly contradicts a French investigation into the genocide.

A recent French parliamentary inquiry says France's Operation Turquoise helped save Tutsi lives.

The author of the report, Alison Des Forges, says that mission had a military, not humanitarian objective: to protect the government from the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front.

Desforges put much of the blame for the killings on the inaction of the international community and the United Nations. She says member-governments kept up a business-as-usual approach with the Rwandan government --- even while the killings were underway.

"When Belgium asked for an extension of the mandate so the peacekeeping force could stop the preparations for the genocide," reports Des Forges. "The United States and the United Kingdom refused. The U.S. position was 'if there is substantial violence, we're out of here'."

The report also says the international community had enough warning to prevent the 1994 genocide in Rawnda-- at least six warnings. But nothing was done.

The U.S. Belgium, France and the United Nations were all told about Hutu plans to exterminate the minority Tutsi population and politically moderate Hutus.

But it charges they ignored the evidence.