UN STOPS RWANDAN GENOCIDE EXHIBITION

AngolaPress, Angola
April 11 2007

New York, UN 04/11 – The UN has postponed an exhibition on the Rwandan
genocide after Turkish diplomats objected to references to the Armenian
genocide in Turkey during World War I.

The exhibition was earlier scheduled for opening by the UN Secretary-
General Ban Ki-moon on Monday at the organisation`s headquarters in
New York.

However, a UN spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters Tuesday the
exhibition was delayed because the normal process was not followed.

"The exhibition has been postponed until the regular review process
is completed. Normally the United Nations has to review exhibitions,
in order to take into account all positions, as it does in any
exhibition," Haq said.

Asked whether a dispute over Armenians in Turkey was responsible for
the stoppage, he said that "it was not the sole issue".

"As for Turkey, the United Nations has not expressed a position
on incidents that took place long before the United Nations was
established," he noted.

Panels of graphics, photos and statements, which were installed at the
weekend in the visitors` lobby for the exhibition by the organisers,
British-based Aegis Trust, were later dismantled.

The trust campaigns for the prevention of genocide and runs a center
in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, and its exhibition was organised in
memory of about 800,000 Rwandans killed 13 years ago.

PANA gathered that hours after the show was assembled, some Turkish
diplomats at the UN were said to have spotted "offending wordings"
in a section of a passage entitled: "What is genocide?" and raised
objections.

The passage said: "Following World War I, during which one million
Armenians were murdered in Turkey, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer
credited with coining the word genocide, urged the League of Nations
to recognise crimes of barbarity as international crimes."