By James Munyaneza & Patrick Bigabo
The New Times

..... pledges more Aids support

‘I was the government of the United States in 1994’ (when Rwanda Genocide took place), former US President Bill Clinton said Saturday, as he recalled his personal failure to stop the worst human catastrophe in recent history.

“I feel a special commitment because of the way Rwandans reacted. I didn’t express the regrets of my government, I expressed regrets for my personal failure,” Clinton admitted during his last leg of a five-Africa nation tour.

He became the first world leader to express remorse for having not stopped the Genocide during his first visit to the country in 1998 when he was still the president.

And it is partly because of this blunder, he said, that he couldn’t ignore Rwanda in his global anti-Aids initiative, the Clinton Foundation.

“When I started to work on Aids, which I started working on with (former South Africa President) Nelson Mandela in 2002 at International Aids Conference in Barcelona (in Spain) to do as much as I could in Africa, I couldn’t imagine being involved in Africa and not being involved in Rwanda,” the former president-turned charity advocate told journalists after a brief visit at the Treatment and Research Aids Centre (TRAC) in Kigali.

When he later visited Gisozi Genocide Memorial Site on the outskirts of the city, the sombre Clinton said: “This shouldn’t happen again.”

“He told me that Rwandans died like animals yet other countries were not bothered and that it should not occur again,” Kigali City Vice Mayor in charge of Social Affairs, Gaston Rusiha told our reporter. Rusiha accompanied him to the site.

But despite his indifference during the killings in which an estimated one million Tutsis and Hutu moderates perished, Clinton still commands big respect among Rwandans.

The former US president, who earlier in the day met and was hosted to a state luncheon in Village Urugwiro by President Paul Kagame, said one of his objectives was to make Rwanda a world-class model in Aids treatment and care in rural areas.

“We want Rwanda to be a model for the world about how to provide the same kind of care for people who are HIV positive in villages, that is typically provided in urban clinics,” he said.

He also pledged 10,000 additional paediatric Aids therapy to infected children in more than ten nations on by the end of 2005, more than doubling the number previously receiving life-saving medicine in the developing world.

Clinton said he would cater for all personnel costs under his Foundation country support programs, and that he would mobilise support from donor governments and individuals for availability of cheap antiretroviral drugs.

His meeting with Kagame highlighted the progress made in extending HIV/Aids treatment across the country, the progress of the Foundation’s assistance. They also discussed his individual countries could maximise and properly manage benefit from the recent G-8 gesture to write-off debts owed by poor countries, Rwanda inclusive.

Since 2002, the Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative has been assisting countries in implementing large-scale, integrated care, treatment and prevention programs, has provided access to prices for HIV/Aids drugs and diagnostics that are 50-90 percent lower than market rates. Approximately 40 countries have access to medicines and tests under the Clinton Foundation’s agreements.

Before coming to Rwanda for his third visit, Clinton visited Mozambique, Lesotho, Tanzania and Kenya. He also visited the country in 2002.