Classified papers show Clinton was aware of 'final solution' to eliminate Tutsis
The Guardian, Wednesday 31 March 2004 16.59 BST
President Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being
engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify
its inaction, according to classified documents made available for the
first time.
Senior officials
privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the
killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had
already decided not to intervene.
Intelligence
reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the
cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned
"final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached
its peak.
It took Hutu death
squads three months from April 6 to murder an estimated 800,000 Tutsis
and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed reports were
reaching Washington's top policymakers.
The
documents undermine claims by Mr Clinton and his senior officials that
they did not fully appreciate the scale and speed of the killings.
"It's powerful proof that they knew," said Alison des Forges, a Human Rights Watch researcher and authority on the genocide.
The
National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research
institute based in Washington DC, went to court to obtain the material.
It discovered that the CIA's
national intelligence daily, a secret briefing circulated to Mr Clinton,
the then vice-president, Al Gore, and hundreds of senior officials,
included almost daily reports on Rwanda. One, dated April 23, said
rebels would continue fighting to "stop the genocide, which ... is
spreading south".
Three days
later the
state department's intelligence briefing for former secretary of state
Warren Christopher and other officials noted "genocide and partition"
and reported declarations of a "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis".
However, the administration
did not publicly use the word genocide until May 25 and even then
diluted its impact by saying "acts of genocide".
Ms
Des Forges said: "They feared this word would generate public opinion
which would demand some sort of action and they didn't want to act. It
was a very pragmatic determination."
The
administration did not want to repeat the fiasco of US intervention in
Somalia, where US troops became sucked into fighting. It also felt the
US had no interests in Rwanda, a small central African country with no
minerals or strategic value.
William
Ferroggiaro, of the National Security Archive, said the system had
worked. "Diplomats, intelligence agencies, defence and military
officials - even aid
workers - provided timely information up the chain," he said.
"That
the Clinton administration decided against intervention at any level
was not for lack of knowledge of what was happening in Rwanda."
Many
analysts and historians fault Washington and other western capitals not
just for failing to support the token force of overwhelmed UN
peacekeepers but for failing to speak out more forcefully during the
slaughter.
Some of the Hutu extremists orchestrating events might have heeded such warnings, they have suggested.
Mr
Clinton has apologised for those failures but the declassified
documents undermine his defence of ignorance. "The level of US
intelligence is really amazing," said Mr Ferroggiaro. "A vast array of
information was available."
On
a visit to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, in 1998 Mr Clinton apologised
for not acting quickly enough or immediately calling the crimes
genocide.
In what was widely
seen as an
attempt to diminish his responsibility, he said: "It may seem strange
to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family,
but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices,
day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and
speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror."
A
spokesperson for the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation in New York
said the allegations would be relayed to the former president.
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