Clinton Affirms 'Black' Role
Washington (AP)- President Clinton agrees with author Toni Morrison: he is-unofficially-the nation's first black president.
Clinton jokingly claimed that distinction for himself Saturday night at the Congressional Black Caucus' annual awards dinner.
He said comedian Chris Tucker told him he'd like to see the Oval Office to prepare for an upcoming movie role as the nation's first black president.
"I didn't have the heart to tell him that I've already taken the position," Clinton said.
In an October 1998 essay in The New Yorker magazine, Morrison said black Americans tended to be sympathetic to Clinton because his impoverished childhood and personal struggles seemed to mirror many of their own experiences.
"Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president," she wrote. "Blacker than any actual person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime."
This article is from Yahoo! News and was published Sunday, September 19, 1999 at 5:08 PM ET. It is copyrighted by the Associated Press.
US foresaw genocide but sought withdrawal of peacekeepers, papers show
The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Wednesday, August 22, 2001
By Maxim Kniazkov in WashingtonThe United States Government fully expected mass killings in Rwanda after Rwanda's president died in 1994 but still found "insufficient justification" for retaining United Nations peacekeepers in the country, declassified documents show.
The newly released documents, obtained by the National Security Archive, show that as bloodthirsty Hutu militias fanned out across the country, US diplomats advocated "an orderly withdrawal" of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda that some believe could have helped protect civilians.
The killing rampage in Rwanda, now considered one of the most gruesome acts of genocide of the second half of the 20th century, was triggered by the death on April 6 of the Rwandan Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana, in a suspicious plane crash blamed by many Hutu on ethnic Tutsi.
Within hours of the crash extremist Hutu militias backed by elements of the armed forces began the 100-day massacre that would eventually take the lives of as many as 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The US Defence Department knew about these activities, the documents show.
In a memorandum to the under-secretary of defence Frank Wisner dated April 11, a Pentagon official said that "unless both sides can be convinced to return to the peace process, a massive [hundreds of thousands of deaths] bloodbath will ensue that would likely spill over into Burundi".
"In addition, millions of refugees will flee into neighbouring Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire, far exceeding the absorptive capacity of those nations," the official wrote.
But just three days later the State Department instructed the US mission at the UN to work towards a withdrawal of the UN assistance mission.
The "department believes that there is insufficient justification to retain a UN peacekeeping presence in Rwanda and that the international community must give highest priority to full, orderly withdrawal of all [mission] personnel as soon as possible," the confidential cable said.
The UN Security Council voted to pull out the troops on April 21.
But even as images of mutilated bodies began appearing on television screens, US officials were loath to classify the killings as genocide for fear it would compel the US to intervene, the documents indicated.
"Be careful," warned a secret memo circulated on May 1 among top defence officials. "Legal at State was worried about this yesterday - genocide finding could commit USG [the US Government] to actually 'do something'."
As late as May 21 the term genocide was taboo for US diplomats, according to an assistant secretary of state, George Moose, who urged his boss, the secretary of state, Mr Warren Christopher, to reconsider the ban.
AFP