Clinton documents reveal response to Rwanda genocide criticism
- Papers suggest range of responses to 1994 crisis
- Clinton aide: administration 'responded to danger signs'
James Ball in New York
theguardian.com, Friday 28 February 2014 15.31 EST
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Former President Bill Clinton and Rwandan President Paul Kagame at a
2012 event in Kigali. Photograph: Ed Ou/Getty Images
Newly released documents from the Clinton presidential library reveal
how the administration worked to explain the often-criticised US
response to genocide in Rwanda.
Documents preparing President Bill Clinton for an interview with a
Washington Post reporter, Tom Lippman, suggest a range of responses to
possible criticisms of the administration's response to one of the
most serious post-war humanitarian crises.
Over around 100 days in the summer of 1994, members of Rwanda's Hutu
majority slaughtered between 500,000 and a million people,
predominantly Tutsis. The international community was condemned for
its slow reaction, which was in part attributed to the killing of
several US troops during an earlier United Nations mission in Somalia.
The memo for the president, written in September 1994 by a close aide,
Tara Sonenshine, attempts to rebut potential criticisms in turn.
If Lippman suggested the USA's experience in Somalia had prevented
Clinton from doing "the right thing", Sonenshine suggested the
president should respond: "If we were truly spooked by Somalia, we
would have turned away entirely, instead of committing 4,000 American
troops and spending $500m to give the people of Rwanda humanitarian
help."
Another answer suggests an earlier deployment of peacekeepers to the
region should be used to say the administration had "responded to
danger signs – not ignored them", and makes a defence of a US decision
in April, weeks before the genocide began, to push for the UN to
withdraw its peacekeepers.
Sonenshine was, however, unable to offer a rebuttal to every line of
questioning she could foresee.
"On the decision NOT to provide US peacekeepers and the notion that
PRD 25 [Likely a typographical error in a reference to PDD-25, a
Clinton directive governing US involvement in UN peacekeeping
missions] was designed to limit peacekeeping," she wrote "with Rwanda
fast-becoming the litmus test of that unwillingness — I leave that to
you!"
A later note from Sonenshine to one of Clinton's speechwriters, Bob
Boorstein, returns to the subject of Rwanda, gently admonishing some
in the administration for spurning the idea of a "moral" foreign
policy.
"I know you bristled at the term "moral" especially vis-a-vis foreign
policy," Sonenshine wrote, "but the reality is that this president has
a moral compass … we fail to trumpet the fact that he has the moral
courage to take on difficult issues such as staying in Somalia even
after the killing of US servicemen, bringing the force of the entire
US military to bear on the crisis in Rwanda [and] sticking up for
democracy in Haiti."
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