UNITED STATES:UN SECRETARY general Ban Ki-moon has offered to retain a Rwandan general as the global agency's second-highest-ranking commander in Sudan's war-torn Darfur, despite allegations that he oversaw troops responsible for war crimes in Rwanda during the 1990s, according to UN officials.
Mr Ban told the Rwandan government last week that Maj Gen Emmanuel Karake Karenzi would be granted a six-month contract as the deputy force commander for the African Union-UN Mission in Darfur when his one-year term expires later this month.
Mr Ban's offer marked a reversal by the UN, which had urged the Rwandan government to replace Maj Gen Karenzi after a Spanish court indicted him and 39 other Rwandan officers on war crimes charges in February.
The UN yielded after Rwandan president Paul Kagame threatened to withdraw 3,000 Rwandan peacekeepers from Darfur unless the UN renewed the general's contract for one year. The reduction would have crippled the 10,000-strong international force.
But Mr Ban proposed to Mr Kagame last week that the general be pushed out within six months, and that Rwanda could then nominate another Rwandan general - one not on the list of those indicted - to assume the top command post in Darfur when the current commander completes his term next June. Mr Kagame rejected the terms, but the UN is likely to extend Maj Gen Karenzi's contract regardless, the sources said.
A spokesman for the US State Department insists there was no conclusive evidence that Maj Gen Karenzi had engaged in human rights abuses. He was an officer in the ethnic Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front that swept to power in 1994, overthrowing a Hutu-dominated government responsible for killing more than 800,000 in Africa's bloodiest genocide.
Once in power, the Rwandan Defence Forces engaged in a brutal counterinsurgency campaign that left tens of thousands dead, say human rights advocates.
The Rwandan government has come under increasing scrutiny for its human rights record, particularly in France and Spain, where prosecutors have invoked universal jurisdiction, which allows local courts to prosecute foreign officials for genocide and crimes against humanity. The approach has led to prosecutions of foreign leaders, including former Chilean dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet, but few convictions.
A French court issued arrest warrants against nine officers close to Mr Kagame over the shooting down of an aircraft carrying his predecessor, president Juvenal Habyarimana. - (LA Times-Washington Post)