After seeing graphic reminders of the Rwandan genocide, US President George W. Bush called on Tuesday for increased international efforts to help Darfur. Bush visited a memorial to the 1994 genocide when 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by Hutu extremists.
At a museum where the remains of some 250,000 victims are buried, he viewed pictures of children who were killed and laid a wreath at a memorial. "One of the lessons of the genocide in Rwanda was to take some of the early warning signs seriously," Bush said at a news conference with Rwanda's President Paul Kagame on the third stop of his five-nation African tour.
Bush called attention to the conflict in Darfur, which he has labelled genocide, and criticised the United Nations for moving too slowly to send more peacekeepers. He said it "seems very bureaucratic to me, particularly with people suffering". The United States has been pressing for the deployment of a 26,000-strong UN-African Union peacekeeping force to Darfur, where experts estimate at least 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes. Sudan says 9,000 people have died.
Bush also announced the United States was making available $100 million to help train and equip peacekeepers for Darfur, including $12 million to Rwanda. He said he still believed he made the right decision not to unilaterally deploy US forces to Darfur but that meant having to deal with a slow UN response.
Bush said the genocide museum exhibits "remind people that there is evil in the world, and evil must be confronted". It was a sober interlude after Bush's three-day visit to Tanzania, where he was feted by cheering crowds. Bush began his second trip to the continent with a brief stop in Benin and will next go to Ghana and Liberia before returning home on Thursday.
In the past, genocide survivors criticised the United States for not intervening to stop the slaughter in Rwanda. "There's nothing we can tell him - we do not even plan on meeting him because I am sure he knows about the plight of Rwanda genocide survivors," Theodore Simburudali, president of the Ibuka genocide survivor group, told Reuters. In 1998, US President Bill Clinton, who was in power at the time of the genocide, visited Rwanda and apologised for not making more of an effort to stop the killings.
Kagame, like the other presidents on Bush's tour, is regarded by Washington as one of a new generation of progressive African leaders. Kagame thanked Bush for the attention he has paid to Africa. "You have raised the bar of American-African relations to a level which the next president of the United States should not lower," he said.