General Dallaire appointed to Canada’s Senate

UN’s Rwanda conscience

OTTAWA, Ontario – General (retired) Roméo Dallaire who served as Commander of the UN Mission in Rwanda in the 1990s, has been appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Paul Martin recently. Gen. Dallaire warned the UN for months of rising ethnic tensions in the African nation but received no help from his UN Cameroon-born political boss Jacques-Roger Booh Booh in Rwanda who later was fired for leaving his post without permission. The ethnic tension subsequently erupted into a mass slaughter, extracting the deaths of hundreds of thousands tribesmen.

Dallaire who with his Dutch mother in 1947 came to Canada to join his father, suffered a personal crisis after the Rwanda ordeal. He eventually wrote a book about his experiences with the UN Mission, Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, a bestseller. Just recently, his fired UN boss released his own book “Dallaires’ Boss Speaks,’in which he blames Dallaire for his Rwanda troubles. Others also criticized Dallaire’s inability to deal with ethnic tension in the African nation while the UN’s role of poorly equipping troops and insufficient support also received renewed attention.

Ottawa political analysts applauded Dallaire’s appointment to the Senate where he will be the first member who is born in the Netherlands. Dallaire’s father served with the Canadian army in the Netherlands in 1945.