20100828
reuters

KIGALI (Reuters) - Rwanda rejected as malicious and ridiculous on Friday a leaked draft United Nations report that said its troops may have committed genocide in Congo in the 1990s.

It accused the U.N. of seeking to bury its own failings.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights report, seen by Reuters on Thursday, details some 600 serious crimes committed by various forces from a number of nations in Congo, but experts said Rwanda came off worst due to the genocide charge.

"It is immoral and unacceptable that the U.N., an organization that failed outright to prevent genocide in Rwanda ... now accuses the army that stopped the genocide of committing atrocities in the Congo," said Rwandan government spokesman Ben Rutsinga.

U.N. peacekeepers were widely criticised for failing to prevent the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda that ended only after Tutsi-led fighters under current President Paul Kagame retook control of the country.

Rwanda's army then invaded Congo, ostensibly to hunt down Hutu fighters who had taken part in the killings and fled into eastern Congo, then known as Zaire.

In the process, Rwandan forces swept the Congolese AFDL rebels of Laurent Kabila to power in Congo. Both forces have been accused of a string of rights abuses against Hutu fighters and civilians across the country.

Rwanda said in a statement the timing of the "malicious, offensive and ridiculous" report was meant to deflect attention away from mass rapes that U.N. troops currently in Congo failed to stop in villages earlier in August.