UN:THE UNITED Nations must decide soon whether to keep a senior Rwandan general as its number two peacekeeper in Darfur, after he was indicted for war crimes alleged to have been committed more than a decade ago.
The alternative is to allow his contract to lapse and risk a threatened pull-out by the entire Rwandan contingent that would further undermine an already troubled peace mission in the Sudanese province. A quarter of peacekeepers in Darfur are Rwandans.
The fate of Maj Gen Emmanuel Karenzi Karake, deputy commander of the Unamid joint UN-African Union force, is nearing a showdown at a time when the peacekeepers are increasingly hard pressed to protect local civilians, and can even find themselves on the defensive.
Seven Unamid soldiers were killed and 22 wounded in the province on Tuesday in an ambush unofficially blamed on militia loyal to the Khartoum government.
The Karake case is proving to be a test of how the international community juggles the imperatives of peacekeeping and international law. UN officials said questions over Gen Karake's past had delayed his reappointment, and the final decision would now rest with Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general.
Gen Karake, described by officials and diplomats as one of Unamid's most able officers whom the force could ill afford to lose, was appointed to his post almost a year ago and his contract is up for renewal.
In the meantime, however, a Spanish judge named him in a February indictment for his alleged role in the killing of thousands of ethnic Hutu civilians in the years following the 1994 Hutu-led genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi minority.
The 180-page indictment, which names 40 suspects, alleges that Gen Karake, a former military intelligence chief, also knew and approved of operations against civilians in which three Spanish aid workers were among the victims.
Paul Kagame, Rwandan president and former head of Tutsi rebels who took power in 1994, has rejected the option of quietly replacing Gen Karake when his contract runs out in September.
He warned that he would sooner withdraw his country's contingent from Darfur than countenance the sacking of his former comrade-in-arms.
President Kagame is also named in the Spanish indictment, although Judge Fernando Merelles acknowledged that, as a head of state, the Rwandan leader was beyond the reach of Spanish law. Last week Mr Kagame said Rwanda would consider pursuing French nationals accused of being involved in the genocide.