Title
À Goma l'immensité des moyens que les Américains mettent en place ne trouvent pas de camions pour être acheminés. Les Français, eux, n'étaient pas programmés à l'origine pour les tâches humanitaires
Abstract
- American hesitations on the attitude to adopt in Rwanda. The Pentagon announced last night the dispatch of 4,000 soldiers. And then this figure was denied. The Americans seem to want to base themselves in Kigali, without being certain that their presence there will be entirely effective.
- In Goma, the immensity of the means that the Americans are putting in place cannot find trucks or vehicles to be transported. "We are waiting for the UN trucks", saids US Army Major Hanson. "Without them we cannot do anything, we cannot move".
- The French were not originally programmed for humanitarian tasks. The role of gravedigger is therefore assigned to them. Containing the cholera epidemic is already not so bad.
- The only ray of hope: the Israeli field hospital. 90 military doctors, remarkably well organized, work non-stop and save human lives. But it is a drop of water in this ocean of misery.
- So we talk a lot about the return of refugees to Rwanda. We want to believe it. But a quick glance at the Rwandan town of Gisenyi proves that it is still wishful thinking.
- The international community and humanitarian organizations have bet that the Rwandan refugees will return home quickly. This is why the bulk of American humanitarian aid is being established in Kigali, Rwanda. But here it is: for lack of information, for lack of strength so often, most of the refugees remain here, in Goma, in Zaire, where they continue to die. And humanitarian aid is being established elsewhere.
- French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur announced this morning that he would go to Goma on Sunday [July 31]. Mr. Balladur wants, he said, "to show the solidarity of the government with the military and to visit the refugees".