U.S. Policy Suffers Fallout of Faltering U.N. Probe in Congo

The decision to pull back a U.N. team investigating the massacre of refugees in Congo--after the government there refused to cooperate with it--has delivered a setback to the Clinton administration’s Africa policy and to U.N. efforts to put human rights at the center of the international agenda.

The Congolese obstruction of the investigation came despite the efforts of Bill Richardson, the globe-trotting U.S. ambassador to the U.N., who traveled to Africa twice last year in what now appears to be a fruitless attempt to get President Laurent Kabila of Congo to cooperate in the probe. It is also a blow to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who changed U.N. policy in an attempt to overcome Kabila’s objections.

The U.N. began withdrawing members of the 26-person team Wednesday and expects to make a formal announcement today after the Congolese government is officially informed.

Annan said Thursday that the inquiry will continue, but it will be based at the U.N.’s European headquarters in Geneva rather than in Congo. “The search for the truth will continue,” Annan said.

He denied that the effort had been a failure, saying that it illustrates “how difficult it is to get to the facts, to get governments to cooperate in these situations where human rights are at stake. We will probably have to think of other sorts of creative means to get to the truth.”

The reversal comes as the U.S. administration has drawn new attention to its African policy with President Clinton’s recent visit to the continent.

Richardson was Washington’s point man in the move to embrace Kabila last year, when Kabila’s rebel army--supported by forces from neighboring Rwanda and Uganda--overthrew the longtime dictator of the nation formerly known as Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko.

Richardson met with Kabila even before he had displaced Mobutu and, according to a senior U.S. official, helped establish an ongoing U.S. communications link with Kabila’s forces during the final drive to the capital, Kinshasa.

After Mobutu’s fall, State Department officials characterized Kabila as one of a new generation of Central African leaders supportive of market economies and pluralistic societies, if not enamored of multi-party democracies.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is considered the godfather of this new generation. Paul Kagame, the vice president and de facto leader of Rwanda, is another member of the group. Clinton met with both men on his Africa trip.

But Kabila has broken his promises to Richardson and Annan to cooperate in the U.N. human rights probe, and he has cracked down on peaceful opposition to his rule.

Recent reports by the U.N. and private human rights groups have compared his human rights abuses to those carried out by Mobutu.

American and European government officials have warned Kabila that economic aid to the country may hinge on his cooperation with the agreement. The U.S. has granted about $8 million to Congo in this fiscal year, mainly through private aid agencies and local governments, said James Foley, deputy State Department spokesman.

Between $45 million and $50 million has been earmarked for the next fiscal year, but Foley said the entire U.S. relationship with Congo will be reviewed in the coming weeks.

State Department sources say there were always doubts about the human rights commitment of Kabila, a former Leninist who spent much of the last decade in the African bush fighting a low-intensity war against the late Mobutu. But the U.S. decided that it was better to try to influence him than to isolate him.

Part of that effort was to persuade Kabila to cooperate with the U.N. investigation of the suspected massacre of thousands of ethnic Hutu refugees during the civil war.

Human rights observers in Congo believe that refugees were killed by Kabila’s forces or Rwandan soldiers in retaliation for the 1994 slaughter of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda.

Rwandan officials contend that the refugee camps were staging areas for Hutu guerrillas who helped in the 1994 genocide.

But the dead refugees included thousands of noncombatants, including women and children, say witnesses and U.N. officials in the area.

In appointing the U.N. investigative team last year, Annan took the unusual step of replacing the expert already appointed to conduct the probe because Kabila objected to his presence.

Annan was accused by human rights groups of caving in to U.S. pressure to accommodate Kabila. One source close to the investigation said the U.S. pressure continued even after the Congolese government began obstructing the probe.

“The United States put much more pressure on the U.N. to accommodate Kabila’s objections than they did on Kabila to adhere to the agreement,” the source said.

According to U.N. reports, Congolese officials intimidated witnesses, organized demonstrations to block investigative access to suspected mass graves and delayed providing necessary security and transport.

Last week, Christopher Harland, a Canadian member of the team, was detained overnight by Congolese authorities, and sensitive files were seized.

U.S. and U.N. officials have expressed concern for the safety of witnesses who have talked to investigators once the team is removed.

Reed Brody, a former team member who is now advocacy director for Human Rights Watch in New York, said the investigation could be completed from outside Congo if it receives adequate financial support from the U.N. and cooperation from other governments with intelligence on Congo’s civil war, including the United States.