Kigali — In 1994, as the Genocide machine rampaged in Rwanda, the then U.S President Bill Clinton and wife Hillary Clinton bitterly disagreed on whether the US should intervene to stop the bloodshed, RNA reports.

Addressing an audience in Iowa State on the campaign trail for his wife on her bid for the US top job, President Clinton talked about things he had done wrong on health care and briefly discussed welfare reform. Mr. Clinton had been asked whether there were any issues they disagreed.

And then, using a more somber tone, according to the Boston Globe newspaper he explained that she had wanted the United States to intervene in Rwanda in 1994, when hundreds of thousands of people died in a genocide that lasted just a few months.

"I believe if I had moved we might have saved at least a third of those lives," he said. "I think she clearly would have done that", he said.

Mr. Clinton has often said that not acting in Rwanda was one of his biggest regrets. It's a decision, he said, for which he continues to try to make amends. Had he listened to his wife, Clinton said, things might have been different.

He went on to explain how America, which did intervene in the former Yugoslavia, could only take on so much at once. But not acting in Rwanda, he suggested, was a mistake his wife wouldn't make.

Documents declassified in 2004 indicate that President Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by Genocide but silenced any discussion about the information to justify its inaction.

Senior officials privately apparently used the word Genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene.

The daily secret CIA's national intelligence briefs given to Mr. Clinton, the then vice-president, Al Gore, and hundreds of senior officials, included almost daily reports on Rwanda. In a particular one, dated April 23, said rebels (RPF) would continue fighting to "stop the genocide, which ... is spreading south".

The mass killings started on April 7, a day after President Habyarimana Juvenal has died in a plane crash - along with Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira and several senior officials from both sides. Over the next 100 days, tens of thousands would be brutally massacred as the powers look on - as the media also kept a blackout on Rwanda.

However, the administration did not publicly use the word genocide until May 25 and even then diluted its impact by saying "acts of genocide".

In 1998, Mr. Clinton apologised for not acting quickly enough or immediately calling the crimes Genocide.

His foundation has dedicated enormous efforts to supporting Rwanda over the HIV/Aids scourge - one of the outcomes of the Genocide - as hundreds of women were infected leaving HIV widow and orphans.