Rusesabagina fears Rwanda's backlash

But he is not bitter about it. "The Clinton administration didn't help, but I don't blame the American people. They are innocent. The administration was fresh from the tragedy of Blackhawk Down in Somalia. It was still fresh in American minds. That is one of the reasons the United States didn't intervene. They pulled out even the few soldiers they had sent."

Being on the book-promotion circuit is tiring Rusesabagina but he believes it to be worthwhile. More than giving lectures, he would enjoy thinking and writing in the future. After he left Rwanda in 1996, he was not offered another hotel manager's job, so when he moved to Belgium, bought a taxi, and when business picked up he bought a second. Now, if he returns to Belgium, he has a trucking business to run.

In the meantime, he is worried about a new wave of genocide now taking place in Darfur. In fact, he wrote a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, in which he listed the four conditions necessary for genocide to occur — the cover of war, ethnic grievances manipulated and exaggerated, ordinary citizens deputized by the government to perform executions, "and the rest of the world must be persuaded to look away and do nothing."

That, he said, is what is happening in the Sudan today. "And the world community has done precious little to stop the killings. What is happening in Darfur is exactly what happened in my country of Rwanda, which was left to choke on its own blood from April to July of 1994."

The ultimate lesson of both Rwanda and Darfur, wrote Rusesabagina, is the need to reform the United Nations and perform "a basic rethinking of its peacekeeping philosophy.

"World governments must agree that the extinction of a race is a crime worth stopping at any cost, and back up this sentiment with action."

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E-mail: dennis@desnews.com