UN chief meets Rwandan president over genocide report

Sep 8, 2010, 13:35 GMT

Geneva - United Nations head Ban Ki-moon met Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Kigali Wednesday in an attempt to defuse a row over a draft UN report saying Rwandan forces may have committed genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The draft report, leaked to the media in late August, led to the Central African nation threatening to pull its troops from UN peacekeeping missions, starting with Sudan's Darfur province.

Ban arrived in Kigali on Tuesday night for an unannounced visit to discuss the report with Kagame, who was inaugurated for a second term as president on Monday.

'The secretary general decided to visit Kigali to speak directly with the Rwandan president and other government officials about their concern regarding the ... report compiled by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva,' the UN said in a statement.

Details of the discussion between the two leaders were yet to emerge.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay last week delayed the release of the report until October to allow 'concerned states' to comment on its contents.

There were rumours that Ban pressured Pillay to remove the word 'genocide' from the text. However, Pillay's spokesman said Ban had not made any attempt to have the text altered.

The report details hundreds of incidents and the killings of tens of thousand of non-combatants, including women and children, in the DR Congo between 1993 and 2003.

According to the report, the Rwandan army and associated Congolese rebel groups systematically targeted members of the Hutu tribe in DR Congo.

Hutu militias slaughtered 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, which was ended by invading Tutsi forces led by Kagame. Around 1 million Hutus fled to DR Congo as the Tutsi army bore down on Kigali.

The actions of the Rwandan army in seeking revenge on Hutus in DR Congo could be defined as genocide, the report said.

Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo, with whom Ban met on Tuesday evening, has said Rwandan soldiers in Darfur, numbering almost 3,500, have been put on standby for withdrawal in advance of the report's publication.