Bush points to lessons of Rwanda in Darfur crisis

President Bush, expressing frustration that the United Nations has had a difficult time raising and deploying a sufficient peacekeeping force in Darfur, said Tuesday that the 1994 Rwandan genocide should have taught the world not to ignore signs of budding brutality.

Bush said Rwanda would receive $12 million of the $100-million contribution the U.S. is making this year to U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Darfur. The money will help provide training and vehicles for the 2,400 troops that Rwanda has said it will add to a 7,000-troop deployment in the troubled area of western Sudan.

The issue of Sudan government’s brutal suppression of a rebellion in Darfur has shadowed Bush during his five-nation trip to Africa, even as the president has sought to focus on political progress and the fight against diseases on the continent.

Bush defended his decision not to send U.S. troops to Darfur, where the rebellion erupted in 2003, and to rely on a force being assembled by the U.N. and the African Union.

But, renewing his complaint that the U.N. has taken too long to deploy an African force, he said that it “seems very bureaucratic to me, particularly with people suffering.”

The president’s readiness to commit the United States to provide money, training and logistical support to try to end a distant conflict demonstrated how far he has traveled since he sought election eight years ago with a distinct antipathy for such work.

Bush said at a news conference with Rwandan President Paul Kagame that he agreed with Kagame’s assessment that Darfur and similar crises on the continent should be resolved “in Africa, by Africans.” At the same time, Bush acknowledged that the U.S. had an important role to play.

Bush said the U.S. had spent $17 million to train, equip and transport the 7,000 Rwandan peacekeeping troops in Darfur.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said the U.S. contribution to the U.N. was being used in training troops from Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Malawi and Rwanda for duty in Darfur.

Still, it was clear that some here expect more from the Bush administration -- and not just in Darfur.

Bush was taken to task Tuesday by a newspaper in Tanzania for not visiting an international tribunal that is trying Rwandan genocide cases. The panel meets in the city of Arusha, where Bush spent Monday.

Bush said Tuesday that he would tell his successor that “one of the lessons of the genocide in Rwanda was to take some of the early warning signs seriously.”

Citing what he presented as insufficient support by other countries for the sanctions he has imposed on seven Sudanese leaders to pressure them to resolve the Darfur crisis, Bush said, “Human suffering ought to . . . preempt commercial interests.”

Second, he said, was the need to respond with sufficient force able to take action, rather than with people “who are observers.”

In Darfur, he said, “we just got to get people in place to be able to save lives.”

Since 2003, at least 200,000 people are believed to have died from violence, hunger and disease as the Sudanese government, often using militias as proxies, sought to suppress a rebellion in the region. Some Darfur activists have put the toll as high as 450,000. The Sudanese government says 5,000 have died.

On Feb. 8, the U.N.’s peacekeeping chief, Jean-Marie Guehenno, and special envoy for Sudan, Jan Eliasson, told the Security Council that increasing clashes between Sudanese troops and rebels in western Darfur made it difficult to deliver aid to the area and deploy peacekeepers.

Some 26,000 troops and police are planned for deployment, but only about 9,000 have arrived because of a shortage of equipment and objections from Sudan.

Before meeting with Kagame in this hilly central African capital, Bush and his wife, Laura, spent nearly 40 minutes in the Kigali Memorial Center.

The U.N. estimates that 800,000 people were killed in the Rwandan genocide. But new remains have been found as Kigali, the capital, has expanded, raising estimates to more than 1 million.

Among the displays at the memorial are clothing and other personal items of the victims, a bloodstained Superman bedsheet among them.

In a darkened room, human skulls bearing the marks of bullets and machetes are displayed in glass cases.

In another chamber are life-sized photographs of some victims.

Five-year-old Patrick Gashugli Shimirwa, smiling in a T-shirt that hung down to his thighs, is presented in a biographical sketch as “a quiet, well-behaved boy” who liked bike-riding, French Fries, meat and eggs. His best friend was a sister, Alliane. The display listed the cause of death: “Hacked by machete.”

“This is a moving place that can’t help but shake your emotions to your very foundation,” Bush said. “It reminds me that we must not let these kind of actions take place.”

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james.gerstenzang@latimes.com