Q: Joe Lauria, Boston GlobeDid the prohibition of a UN charter against the interference in the internal affairs of a state influence your decision in a way when you were peacekeeping, particularly in Rwanda, and have those decisions weighed on you over the years to make you an advocate for humanitarian intervention? A: AnnanAs you know, the UN is an organization of member states, and the member states are very general of their prerogatives and their rights, and on the question of Rwanda, I don’t think they even looked at it in terms of national pride. Rwanda happened after the UN was pulling out of Somalia after the 18 US troops were killed. When the US left, everybody left. The appetite for peacekeeping changed. We spoke to the governments in 50, 40 countries to get troops, nobody would help us. Some pretended they did not know that this was going on, and that the peacekeeping department of USG Kofi Annan may have withheld some information from them. There were governments in the council who knew more than we did. They had enough information, but the fact that the climate was such and that … but let’s assume they didn’t know. But what do they do when they found out? They sent planes to repatriate their nationals, and allowed the killing to go on. But I think I must say, Rwanda, and what happened in Srebenica, they have had an impact on all of us. They had certainly an impact on the determination that we need to take steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. And that was also part of the [inaudible] speech I gave the general assembly in 1999, that was raising this issue of humanitarian intervention which eventually led to responsibility to protect, and I hope that we will all try to agree to this responsibility. |