Citation
BRUSSELS, April 20 (Reuter) - Belgian peacekeepers returned home on
Wednesday from a failed U.N. mission in Rwanda seen by many as doomed
from the start because of an inflexible mandate from the United
Nations.
Defence Minister Leo Delcroix joined many of his troops in criticising
the U.N. mandate in Rwanda, where 10 Belgian peacekeepers died in
tribal violence set off by the assassination of President Juvenal
Habyarimana on April 6.
Delcroix has for many months pleaded for a more flexible mandate for
the local U.N. commanders, who are the best placed to take rapid
decisions and implement them,
a defence ministry statement said.
This is necessary to assure the security of our men and the efficiency
of missions,
it added.
The final batch of 300 Belgian peacekeepers was airlifted to
neighbouring Tanzania on Tuesday night and then on to Kenya where they
boarded flights for home.
In Kigali on Wednesday, terrified peacekeepers from Bangladesh
scrambled aboard planes as the U.N. mission neared total collapse and
bloody chaos.
Belgian troops returning this week spoke of their disgust for the U.N.
mission, and some soldiers publicly burned their trademark U.N. blue
berets while others ripped them up into shreds in front of television
cameras.
We lost some dignity there and all because the big guns, the fools in
the armchairs in New York, did not allow us to intervene,
one
peacekeeper told Belgian journalists.
Soldiers returning to Melsbroek military airport outside Brussels on
Wednesday said emotions had run high among Belgian troops after the
murder of 10 of their colleagues.
Everyone is very, very sad. There will be no parties now that we have
returned to Belgium,
one told RTBF radio.
The 10 Belgian peacekeepers were tortured and killed while trying in
vain to defend the prime minister, who was hunted down after
Habyarimana's assassination.
About 450 Belgian U.N. peacekeepers were part of the 2,500 strong
mission sent to Rwanda to oversee a peace accord which was brokered
between the government and rebels from the Rwanda Patriotic Front.
The U.N. rules of engagement allowed troops only to fire in
self-defence. In a country awash with weapons, the confiscation of
weapons in Rwanda was largely left to local police.
Military sources said the U.N. should immediately have adjusted the
mandate when Habyarimana's plane was shot down.
There's the strong feeling there are not enough military people in New
York and that it is too full of politicians. We were powerless to
react,
one military source told Reuters.
Belgium has committed more than 12,000 U.N. peacekeepers in the past
two years, and Delcroix said the country would still take part in U.N.
peacekeeping operations.
It is our responsibility to take part in these operations which try to
defuse conflicts threatening international security,
the defence
ministry statement said.
Le Soir newspaper Central Africa expert, Colette Brackmann, said in an
editorial that despite the U.N.'s inflexibility, it was important for
Belgium to maintain its presence in Africa.
The mandate for the blue helmets was not sufficiently clear, not
sufficiently flexible and the decision-making procedures were too slow
and bureaucratic. But to abandon the principle of U.N. intervention and
not participate would encourage the law of the jungle,
Braeckman
wrote.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
