U.N. Ambassador Questioned on U.S. Role in Congo Violence
By
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/helene_cooper/
index.html> HELENE COOPER
Published: December 10, 2012
WASHINGTON - Almost two decades after the Clinton administration failed to
intervene in the
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/rw
anda/genocide/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> genocide in
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/rw
anda/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Rwanda, the United States is coming under
harsh criticism for not moving forcefully in another African crisis marked
by atrocities and brutal killings, this time in Rwanda's neighbor, the
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/co
ngothedemocraticrepublicof/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Democratic Republic of
Congo.
While
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> President Obama and Secretary of State
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/hillary_rodham
_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Hillary Rodham Clinton have taken some
of the blame, critics of the Obama administration's Africa policy have
focused on the role of
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/susan_e_rice/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> Susan E. Rice, the United States ambassador to the
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_
nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org> United Nations and a leading contender to
succeed Mrs. Clinton, in the administration's failure to take action against
the country they see as a major cause of the Congolese crisis, Rwanda.
Specifically, these critics - who include officials of human rights
organizations and United Nations diplomats - say the administration has not
put enough pressure on Rwanda's president,
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/paul_kagame/in
dex.html?inline=nyt-per> Paul Kagame, to end his support for the rebel
movement whose recent capture of the strategic city of Goma in Congo set off
a national crisis in a country that has already lost more than three million
people in more than a decade of fighting. Rwanda's support is seen as vital
to the rebel group, known as M23.
Support for Mr. Kagame and the Rwandan government has been a matter of
American foreign policy since he led the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic
Front to victory over the incumbent government in July 1994, effectively
ending the Rwandan genocide. But according to rights organizations and
diplomats at the United Nations, Ms. Rice has been at the forefront of
trying to shield the Rwandan government, and Mr. Kagame in particular, from
international censure, even as several United Nations reports have laid the
blame for the violence in Congo at Mr. Kagame's door.
A senior administration official said Saturday that Ms. Rice was not
freelancing, and that the American policy toward Rwanda and Congo was to
work with all the countries in the area for a negotiated settlement to the
conflict.
Aides to Ms. Rice acknowledge that she is close to Mr. Kagame and that Mr.
Kagame's government was her client when she worked at Intellibridge, a
strategic analysis firm in Washington. Ms. Rice, who served as the State
Department's top African affairs expert in the Clinton administration,
worked at the firm with several other former Clinton administration
officials, including David J. Rothkopf, who was an acting under secretary in
the Commerce Department; Anthony Lake, Mr. Clinton's national security
adviser; and John M. Deutch, who was director of the Central Intelligence
Agency.
Payton Knopf, a spokesman for Ms. Rice, initially declined to comment on
whether her work with Rwanda at Intellibridge affected her dealings with the
country in her present job as an ambassador. But on Monday, Mr. Knopf said:
"Ambassador Rice's brief consultancy at Intellibridge has had no impact on
her work at the United Nations. She implements the agreed policy of the
United States at the U.N."
Two months ago, at a meeting with her French and British counterparts at the
French Mission to the United Nations, according to a Western diplomat with
knowledge of the meeting, Ms. Rice objected strongly to a call by the French
envoy, Gerard Araud, for explicitly "naming and shaming" Mr. Kagame and the
Rwandan government for its support of M23, and to his proposal to consider
sanctions to pressure Rwanda to abandon the rebel group.
"Listen Gerard," she said, according to the diplomat. "This is the D.R.C. If
it weren't the M23 doing this, it would be some other group." The exchange
was reported in Foreign Policy magazine last week.
A few weeks later, Ms. Rice again stepped in to protect Mr. Kagame. After
delaying for weeks the publication of a United Nations report denouncing
Rwanda's support for the M23 and opposing any direct references to Rwanda in
United Nations statements and resolutions on the crisis, Ms. Rice intervened
to water down a Security Council resolution that strongly condemned the M23
for widespread rape, summary executions and recruitment of child soldiers.
The resolution expressed "deep concern" about external actors supporting the
M23. But Ms. Rice prevailed in preventing the resolution from explicitly
naming Rwanda when it was passed on Nov. 20.
Mr. Knopf, the spokesman for Ms. Rice, said the view of the United States
was that delicate diplomatic negotiations under way among Rwanda, Congo and
Uganda could have been adversely affected if the Security Council resolution
explicitly named Rwanda. "Working with our colleagues in the Security
Council, the United States helped craft a strong resolution to reinforce the
delicate diplomatic effort then getting under way in Kampala," Mr. Knopf
said.
The negotiations subsequently fell apart, and the M23 continued to make
gains in eastern Congo. Last week, the M23 withdrew from Goma but left
behind agents and remain in range of the city.
Mr. Knopf declined to confirm or deny the account offered by the United
Nations diplomat about the conversation between Ms. Rice and the French
ambassador. But he said that "Ambassador Rice has frequently and publicly
condemned the heinous abuses perpetrated by the M23 in eastern Congo,"
adding that the United States was "leading efforts to end the rebellion,
including by leveling U.S. and U.N. sanctions against M23 leaders and
commanders."
Ms. Rice's critics say that is the crux of the problem with the American
response to the crisis in Congo: it ignores, for the most part, the role
played by Mr. Kagame in backing the M23, and, as it happens, risks repeating
the mistakes of the genocide by not erring on the side of aggressive action.
"I fear that our collective regret about not stopping the Rwandan genocide,
felt by all of us who worked for the Clinton administration, led to policies
that overlooked more waves of atrocities in the Congo, which we should
equally regret," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human
Rights Watch, who has worked closely with Ms. Rice both in the Clinton
administration and after.
"For almost 20 years now, the premise of U.S. policy has been that quiet
persuasion is the best way to restrain Rwanda from supporting war criminals
in the Congo," Mr. Malinowski said. "It might have made sense once, but
after years of Rwanda doing what the U.S. has urged it not to do,
contributing to massive civilian deaths, and ripping up U.N. resolutions
that the U.S. sponsored, the time to speak plainly and impose penalties has
come."
When Mrs. Clinton appeared before reporters on Nov. 28 to talk about the
M23's seizure of Goma, she sprinkled her talking points with a demand that
the rebel group withdraw, calling the humanitarian impact "devastating,"
with 285,000 people forced to flee their homes, health workers abducted and
killed, and civil workers under threat of death. But she made no mention of
Rwanda's role backing the rebel group, limiting her inclusion of Rwanda to a
mention of negotiations with Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo to try to get a
cease-fire.
"The M23 would probably no longer exist today without Rwandan support," said
Jason K. Stearns, author of "Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse
of Congo and the Great War of Africa." "It stepped in to prevent the
movement from collapsing and has been providing critical military support
for every major offensive."
Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, noted
that the United States cut a portion of its military financing for Rwanda -
around $250,000. But the Rwandan military continues to receive substantial
American training, equipment and financial help. In an interview, he said,
"There is not an ounce of difference between myself and Ambassador Rice on
this issue," adding that quiet diplomacy was better than publicly calling
out Mr. Kagame.
Ms. Rice, who has been at the eye of a political storm over her portrayal of
the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya,
declined to be interviewed for this article. But in recent days, she seems
to have tried to publicly distance herself from the M23 - although still not
from Mr. Kagame. On Dec. 3, she posted on her Facebook page: "The U.S.
condemns in the strongest terms horrific M23 violence. Any and all external
support has to stop," in a reference to action in the Senate.
Her posting drew immediate responses. "Condemn the rape but don't name the
rapist?" one of them said. "What kind of Justice is that?"
------------[ Sent via the dehai-wn mailing list by dehai.org]--------------
Received on Mon Dec 10 2012 - 16:58:41 EST
