U.N. Names a Point Man for Africa

The United Nations handed the daunting task of developing the framework for an international intervention in Central Africa to a veteran Canadian diplomat Wednesday.

Raymond Chretien, who has been Canada’s ambassador to the United States since 1994 and who previously served in Africa, said he will leave Nov. 6 for a monthlong assessment of the situation in Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire.

Diplomatic sources said the hope was that Chretien’s report to U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali could lead to action to end fighting in the region and prevent a repetition of the bloodshed in 1994, when about 800,000 people were slain in Rwanda.

“We would all lose part of our soul if we were to accept another genocide of that kind,” Chretien said in an interview here Wednesday.

But he and other diplomats acknowledged the enormousness of the task, given the long enmity between ethnic Hutus and Tutsis in the area and the reluctance of Western governments to commit peacekeeping troops.

“This is an extremely difficult mission because there is not just animosity but deep hatred” between Hutus and Tutsis, said Chretien, in Toronto for scheduled consultations with Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy.

Chretien added that, if troops are needed to maintain a truce between the warring parties, it is unclear if any Western country would provide them.

Instead, the U.N. probably would rely on African nations for this duty, with Western countries perhaps providing funding.

Earlier this year, the U.N. contacted 70 nations to see if they might provide troops for a U.N.-led mission to Central Africa; only Ethiopia then said it might join.

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Chretien, nephew of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, was Canada’s ambassador to the three affected countries from 1978 to 1981.

Chretien said he has been asked to meet with government representatives and other parties to the fighting and report back to Boutros-Ghali. He said any U.N. mission evolving from his report would be headed by someone else, stressing that “this is an African issue for Africans.”

That sentiment was echoed in Washington, where State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns praised Chretien’s appointment and repeated U.S. support for creation of an African crisis force.

Burns said the military force would not be ready to assist in the current situation but would be a help in the future.

Even as international attention focuses on Central Africa, U.N. officials confirmed Friday that they are investigating charges of administrative irregularities and improper treatment of staff within the Rwanda war crimes tribunal. It was created by the U.N. to prosecute atrocities committed in the civil war between the Tutsis and Hutus.

Karl T. Paschke, U.N. undersecretary-general for internal oversight, said he has sent an investigator to Africa to look into the situation at the court, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania, and has offices in Kigali, the Rwandan capital.

Paschke said he would not comment about specifics of the case until after the investigation.

But other U.N. sources confirmed a report in the New York Times saying several staff members and legal experts, mostly from Europe, have charged that George L. W. Anderson of Liberia, the acting chief of administration, has been impeding the court’s work.