UK, US ignored genocide threat
It was an unparalleled modern genocide, an attempt to exterminate an entire people in 100 days. And in the years that followed the killing of some 800,000 Rwandans in 1994, political leaders have expressed their regret at an international failure to stop the violence.
Bill Clinton, United States president at the time, admitted last year that if the West had intervened earlier to stop the killing, mostly by Hutus against Tutsis, 300,000 lives could have been saved.
The violence began with the killing of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above Kigali airport on 6 April. Within hours, violence spread from the capital across the country, and did not subside until three months later.
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the genocide, last week declassified diplomatic cables were released by the National Security Archive at George Washington University which showed that the US, Britain and the United Nations were explicitly warned that a "new bloodbath" was imminent in Rwanda.
Rather than increasing the power of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (Unamir), the governments of John Major in Britain and President Clinton in the US were considering rowing back the peacekeeping effort, according to the cables.
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