Rwanda threatens to pull peacekeepers from Darfur over UN report

Sep 1, 2010, 10:44 GMT

Nairobi/Kigali - Rwanda has threatened to pull its troops from the peacekeeping mission in Darfur over a draft United Nations report accusing the Central African nation of massacring thousands of Hutus in the wake of the 1994 genocide.

Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo told reporters in Kigali that Rwandan soldiers in Darfur, numbering almost 3,500, had been put on standby for withdrawal in advance of the report's publication.

The draft report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, leaked to the media, details how the Rwandan army and associated rebel groups systematically targeted Hutus in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Around one million Hutus fled to DR Congo after the genocide, to escape the backlash after Hutu militia had slaughtered 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The report said that checkpoints were set up to identify Hutus and eliminate them in DR Congo, which was formerly known as Zaire. Among the victims were women, children and the elderly.

The actions of the Rwandan army could be defined as genocide, according to the report.

There were rumours that UN head Ban Ki-moon had pressured the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, to remove the word 'genocide' from the text. However, Pillay's spokesman said Ki-moon had not made any attempt to have the text altered.

The genocide is still a sensitive subject in Rwanda. Opponents of President Paul Kagame have been arrested on charges of 'genocide ideology' for suggesting invading Tutsi forces massacred Hutu civilians.

Kagame, who led the Tutsi troops that ended the genocide and seized power in Kigali in 1994, recently won a landslide re-election.