March 31, 1999
Web posted at: 12:37 a.m. EST (0537 GMT)

PARIS (CNN) -- The United States, Belgium, France and the U.N. Security Council all had prior warning about plans for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and could have prevented it, according to a human rights report released Wednesday.

At least half a million people died during the 13 weeks of killings in the central African nation in mid-1994, said the report of over 900 pages, entitled "Leave None to Tell the Story."

The report, released a week before the fifth anniversary of the start of the 90-day slaughter in Rwanda, documents the events leading up to the Hutu government-orchestrated genocide and how it was carried out.

Drawn up by the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues and the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, the report criticizes France, Belgium, the United States and the United Nations for failing to intervene to stop the systematic killings in which mostly minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus perished.

Bodies in the back of a truck during the 1994 genocide

All the parties mentioned "received dozens of warnings in the months before the genocide but failed to act effectively," the rights group said. "Even worse, foreign leaders reacted timidly and tardily once the killing began."

U.N. peacekeeping troops were pulled out of Rwanda rather than ordered into action to prevent the genocide.

While France's later armed intervention, dubbed Operation Turquoise, saved some lives, it also allowed the massacres to continue, the report found.

Although the French operation's 2,500 soldiers saved an estimated 15,000 to 17,000 lives, a poorly equipped U.N. force was able to save twice as many lives before it was withdrawn, the report concluded.

The report is based on four years of research in Rwanda, hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents never before made public, according to its authors.

A key finding also disputes the notion that the genocide, which began on April 6, 1994, after Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down by unknown assailants, was "an explosion of rage...motivated by old tribal hatreds."

It stemmed in fact from "a deliberate choice by a modern political elite to incite fear and hatred to keep itself in power."

Rather than being "possessed by demons," Rwandan Hutus "chose to do evil" in slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

"Many (Hutus) expressed pleasure in inflicting horrible suffering on their victims (while) hundreds of thousands of others hesitatingly joined in the genocide," the report found.

The dead represented three-quarters of Rwanda's Tutsi population, the report said.

The U.N. Security Council last week said it supported an independent inquiry into U.N. actions before and during the genocide between April 6 and July 4, 1994.

Such a probe would also look into the portion of the blame placed on the United States and France, permanent members of the Security Council who defined U.N. policy during the genocide and have been faulted for withdrawing U.N. peacekeepers after it began.

"To the extent that governments and peoples elsewhere failed to prevent and halt this killing campaign, they all share in the shame of the crime," the report said.

The officer in charge of a U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda, Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire of Canada warned in early 1994 of plans to carry out a systematic killing. But U.N. officials consistently refused his calls for reinforcements and allow the peacekeepers to intervene to stop the killings, the report said.

Ten Belgian peacekeepers were killed on the first day of the genocide, prompting Belgium to pull its troops out and support the U.S. position against increasing the peacekeepers' mandate.

France, which was a close ally of the Hutu government in Rwanda, has been accused of sending military support to Rwanda both before and during the genocide. A French parliamentary inquiry last year deflected blame on U.N. and U.S. policy.

"The Americans were interested in saving money, the Belgians were interested in saving face, and the French were interested in saving their ally, the genocidal government," said Alison Des Forges, a scholar on Rwanda and author of the report.

In addition to condemning the Rwandan government, the report compiled data on killings by the Tutsi rebels who took control in July 1994, ending the genocide.

According to the report, soldiers of the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front committed systematic and widespread killings of tens of thousands of civilians suspected of participating in the genocide both during and in the months following the slaughter.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.