A preview of the said “Genocide Fax” published by The New York Times
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former UN Secretary General during the genocide in Rwanda, did not share with the Security Council the so call “Genocide Fax” sent by the UN mission in Kigali, according to the Czech ambassador at the time.
Karel Kovanda, in a letter published in The New York Times writes that the coded Fax sent by Canadian Brig. Gen. Roméo Dallaire “was never shared with the United Nations Security Council in any way.”
The fax was sent on 11 January 1994 warning of an “anti-Tutsi extermination” plot prepared from the highest levels of government at the time. Egyptian Boutros-Ghali has maintained that the fax was given to the Security Council. But the Czech ambassador at the time disputes claim.
“Since I was president of the Security Council when the fax arrived, I confronted the secretary general on this issue toward the end of 1995,” says Kovanda.
“In a subsequent meeting also attended by Chinmaya Garekhan of the United Nations Secretariat, a right-hand man of Mr. Boutros-Ghali’s, the secretary general stuck to his position. In the end, however, Mr. Boutros-Ghali conceded that the Americans, at least, had been informed — which in his view should have been enough as far as the Security Council was concerned. It wasn’t.”
Michael Dobbs, from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the US National Security Archive wrote last week in the same paper that the refusal by UN officials to approve the General Dallaire’s plan for raids on suspected arms caches has been widely condemned as paving the way for one of the worst genocides since the Holocaust. Evidence submitted to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, some of it still under seal, reveals a murkier, more complicated situation than has often been portrayed.
The ex- Czech diplomat says engaging in “what-if” history is rarely fruitful. “But if the Security Council had been aware of Brig. Gen. Roméo Dallaire’s views on the impending genocide, it would at least have had a chance to react — and history might have taken a vastly different turn.”