RWANDA:RWANDA HAS threatened to withdraw its 3,000 peacekeepers from a UN-backed mission in the Darfur region of Sudan if the United Nations refuses to retain an alleged Rwandan war criminal as its second-highest-ranking commander there, according to US and UN officials.
The United Nations has sought to persuade the Rwandan government to replace Maj Gen Emmanuel Karake Karenzi, the deputy force commander of a joint African Union and UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur.
A Spanish judge indicted Gen Karenzi and 39 other Rwandan officers in February for alleged war crimes in Rwanda in the mid-1990s.
The Rwandan government has rejected the UN request, saying that the allegations are groundless and that Gen Karenzi has performed with distinction in Darfur.
Rwanda's UN envoy Joseph Nsengimana sent an unsigned memo to the international body on Monday threatening to pull Rwandan peacekeepers out of Darfur if it proceeded with plans to push Gen Karenzi out, according to a senior UN official.
The United States has sided with the Rwandan government, citing concerns that a Rwandan pullout would cripple the already hobbled peacekeeping mission.
The Bush administration maintains that the peacekeepers provide the best hope of protecting Darfur's civilians from a government-backed counterinsurgency that has led to the deaths of more than 300,000 civilians and driven nearly three million more from their homes.
The United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur is plagued by a shortage of troops, trucks and vital attack and transport helicopters.
Fewer than 10,000 of the 26,000 peacekeepers the mission requires have deployed in the country. Seven UN peacekeepers, including five Rwandans, were killed in a July 8th ambush in Darfur.
The case against Gen Karenzi dates back to the country's troubled past. In 1994, Rwandan Hutu extremists linked to the former government killed more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in one of Africa's bloodiest genocides.
Current Rwandan president Paul Kagame's Tutsi-dominated rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), drove the former government from power. The Rwandan leadership considers Gen Karenzi, a top commander in the rebel campaign, a war hero who helped end the genocide.
But the general's record has come under scrutiny since his appointment last year as the second-ranking UN peacekeeper in Darfur. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, claims that Rwandan forces under Gen Karenzi's command and their Ugandan rivals showed a "blatant disregard for the lives of civilians" during a June 2000 battle in the Congolese town of Kisangani in a separate conflict.
At the time, UN peacekeeping officials said they looked into the charges but could not establish whether Gen Karenzi was responsible for war crimes. But the UN began pressing for his departure after a Spanish magistrate, Fernando Andreu Merelles, issued an indictment in February against Gen Karenzi and 39 other Rwandan officials for reprisal killings of ethnic Hutus and several Spanish nationals. - (Washington Post service)
Reuters adds: Sudan has invited international experts to inspect its legal system to see whether it is capable of holding trials for war crimes committed in Darfur, its justice minister, Abdel Basit Sabderat, said yesterday.
Sudan has launched a diplomatic campaign to counter the International Criminal Court's bid to get an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.