Rwanda a test for UN action

AID officials now estimate that as many as 500,000 people may have been slaughtered in Rwanda in the past few weeks of organized genocide.... All the evidence suggests that the carnage was prepared long in advance by Hutu extremists in the government. Militias were organized, victims identified and targeted. The aim was nothing less than to eliminate members of the once-dominant Tutsi tribe, plus any opposition Hutus who believed in cooperating with them....

The Rwandan tragedy can be seen as an extreme form of the ethnic and factional wars that have broken out - in Europe as well as Africa - since the end of the cold war. As such it will be a test of the proposed method of United Nations intervention, which is to pay for 5,500 troops from neighboring countries. But those African troops are likely to arrive too late.