BBC News Online: World: Africa

UN admits Rwanda genocide failure

In the first formal response to a report critical of the UN's role, council members acknowledged its main finding that their governments lacked the political will to stop the massacres.

At a council debate, the Canadian Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy, said none present could look back without remorse and sadness at the failure to help the people of Rwanda in their time of need.

"The unchecked brutality of the genocidaires made a mockery, once again, of the pledge 'never again,'" he said, referring to the promise made after the Holocaust.

The council stopped short an all-out apology similar to the one delivered by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt one week ago in Kigali.

Instead, the 15 council members focused on the lessons to be learned from their failure to act, particularly in Africa where wars continue to rage.

US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said: "The prevention of another round of genocidal violence in central Africa is one of the core elements of US policy in the Great Lakes, and is one of the United Nations' greatest challenges."

"In the days ahead, how we act to help bring peace to Congo will be the best evidence that we've learned the lessons of our past failures," he said.

Rwanda's UN Ambassador, Joseph Mutaboba, welcomed the report and its recommendations but said the council could do more. "It's never to late to make things right," he said.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who was head of UN peacekeeping operations in 1994, commissioned the report and was out for criticism for not passing on warnings about the impending genocide.

Mr Annan said he fully accepted the report's conclusions.