International community urged to help Rwanda

The UN Special Representative on human rights in Rwanda, Michel Moussalli, has urged the international community to adopt a comprehensive and systematic approach towards providing Rwanda with financial and technical assistance. Addressing the UN human rights commission in Geneva, he said there were "continuing obligations" to be fulfilled by the Rwandan government. Fear and mistrust still existed in Rwandan society, he said, noting "violations of human rights by agents of the state to suppress the feelings of revenge". However Rwanda's representative Gerald Gahima told the commission that Moussalli's report did not adequately spell out the "very positive changes" in the country's human rights situation. While Rwanda acknowledged that individual members of the security forces had on occasion committed human rights violations, it "most vehemently protested the implication that its armed forces ever had a policy or practice of indiscriminate killings of innocent non-combatants during counter-insurgency operations". Gahima called on the international community to take a stand against the spread of the genocide ideology in the Great Lakes region.