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" For President Clinton, according to this discussion I had with him, Rwanda was a marginal problem. "

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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" For us, genocide was the gas chamber - what happened in Germany. We were not able to realize that with the machete you can create a genocide. "

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" The problem is when you are writing something in retrospective, it needs a lot of courage not to change, or you will forget a certain reality, and you will just take in consideration your view today. "

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" I used to say I never talk about my successor, neither about my predecessor. "

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" So this is why I'm always say happy that somebody mentions Rwanda, because behind Rwanda, we have Africa. "

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" A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems. "

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" But definitely, when a decision is taken, or when you are trying to oppose a decision, you are in a weaker position than the member states, because they know more about the situation than you. We gave information, but they never gave us any information. "

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" We were not realizing that, with just a machete, you can do a genocide. "

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" Rwanda was considered a second-class operation; because it was a small country, we had been able to maintain a kind of status quo. They were negotiating, they'd accepted the new peace project, so we were under the impression that everything would be solved easily. "

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" But at the beginning, our definition of the genocide was what happened to Armenia in 1917 or 1919, it's happened to the Jew in Europe, and we were not realizing - In our point of view, they have not the tools to do a genocide. "

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" We got involved in the Rwanda peace process for the simple reason that there was a decision which was taken by the Security Council, because the troops were in Uganda, and we decided to have a military presence. "

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" The failure of the United Nations - My failure is maybe, in retrospective, that I was not enough aggressive with the members of the Security Council. "

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