Rwanda: Who Should Pay For the Crimes?

Was inaction by the U.S. responsible for the massacre of up to 800,000 Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994? At a summit meeting opening Monday in Togo, the ORGANIZATION OF AFRICAN UNITY is expected to request reparations from the U.S. and other members of the U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL for failing to stop the slaughter. The demands are fueled by a 318-page report, Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, commissioned by the OAU and released on Friday. The report charges that Washington had full knowledge of the genocide but "repeatedly and deliberately undermined all attempts to strengthen the U.N. military presence in Rwanda" after suffering losses in Somalia five months earlier. It also accuses France of allowing the perpetrators to escape to nearby Congo. Canada's former U.N. envoy STEPHEN LEWIS, one of seven authors, said the episode left "an almost incomprehensible scar of shame" on U.S. policy. "I don't know how MADELEINE ALBRIGHT lives with it." A State Department spokesman says that Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the U.N., has talked of her frustration. In his 1998 trip to Africa, President Clinton apologized to Rwanda. The report recommends wiping out Rwanda's debt to the IMF and World Bank. However, in urging payment from countries that let the genocide happen, the report overreaches, citing as precedent a case involving more direct responsibility: German reparations after World War II.

--By William Dowell