Focus Media (Kigali)
New York
2 October 2008
When he went to New York City to attend the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly last week, President Paul Kagame led a high powered delegation of officials of his administration as well as members of the private sector.
In the US the President first was in Boston to give a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to address members of the Rwandan Diaspora in North America before proceeding to New York.
Rwanda is picking a reputation as a country you can do business in and here in the US there is no shortage of people listening attentively to President Kagame and expressing praise for his administration for bringing stability and prosperity to Rwanda. One of these people is Terry Lundgren, CEO of Macys, a giant company with a network of superstores across the United States.
Macys was celebrating two years of partnership with Gahaya Links, a company founded by Janet Nkubana, a Rwandan who hit on the idea of selling locally woven baskets by Rwandan women in the US. Lundgren is impressed.
"What impressed me most about Rwanda is the stability and peace so shortly after the trauma of war and genocide," he said during a reception Macys hosted for President Kagame and Nkubana. "This stability is exactly what businesses need to thrive and so we could get into a business partnership with Gahaya Links and we are really proud to be working with these enterprising, hard working Rwandans who want financial self-reliance," added the Macys CEO.
At the event Janet Nkubana commented to Focus that now Gahaya Links and its members are earning around US$ 300,000 a year and sales can only go up.
The emphasis, said President Kagame during the reception, is on trade and not handouts, and groups like Gahaya Links are very good exemplars of this spirit.
"I am very proud indeed to be a part of this moment and a part of change in my country," Nkubana told Focus.
Kagame meets Sarkozy
In New York to address the UN General assembly, the President and members of his delegation-that included among others Foreign Affairs Minister Rosemary Museminari-participated in high-level panels and side meetings, most interesting of which was when Kagame met his French counterpart Nicholas Sarkozy at the UN Plaza Hotel.
Relations between France and Rwanda remain acrimonious. A French judge, Jean Louis Bruguière-using evidence from suspected perpetrators of the Genocide, genocide deniers and people in one way or another with an ax to grind with Rwanda-issued indictments against President Kagame and members of the Rwanda Defense Forces allegedly for shooting down the plane in which former president Habyarimana was.
Rwanda has recently made public a highly detailed report accusing the French government and many high-ranking officials of former French president Francois Mitterrand of direct complicity in the Genocide of 94. This report is giving France nightmares.
At the Plaza Hotel the French delegation requested that the Rwanda media not be privy to the proceedings between the two heads of state, though it wasn't clear whether the same applied to French media.
Second hand sources say President Sarkozy is trying to negotiate a situation where his country is not accused of genocide. The only official communication we could get from the meeting (which was also attended by French Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner) was a communiqué from the president's press secretary Yolanda Makolo.
It was to the effect that "the meeting went well and the two presidents re-affirmed commitment to continue the process towards normalization of relationships between Rwanda and France."
Rwanda means business
In his address to the General Assembly President Kagame had a broadside to fire against countries (though he mentioned none) that abuse the judicial tool of "universal jurisdiction". Universal jurisdiction may be used by some countries that perceive themselves as all powerful to apply their local laws to individuals of other sovereign states.
Universal jurisdiction "if unchecked one can only imagine the legal chaos that would arise should every judge in any country decide to apply local laws to other sovereign states," said Kagame.
Another person that has abused this tool is the Spanish judge Fernando Andreu who, using the same spurious witnesses as Bruguière indicted President Kagame and 40 members of the RDF.
During his address to the UN Kagame also highlighted the progress Rwanda has made socially, politically and economically in the past few years. An applause line was when he mentioned that women now have more seats than men in parliament after the recent elections in Rwanda.
Over the week in the UN building in New York's Manhattan Island one rubbed shoulders with personalities like UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon, US anti-poverty activist Jeffrey Sachs, Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, anti-poverty activist and rock star Bob Geldof, former Ireland president and friend of Rwanda Mary Robinson and others.
To all these people President Kagame and members of the Rwandan delegation was on message: Rwanda is making progress in all areas of life, it needs more investment, it means business and is ready to make further progress.
Double standards
The deliberations of the world's heads of government in the UN's imposing headquarters had their usual moments of drama with leaders, like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launching a blistering verbal attack against the US and Israel.
But the underlying source of serious concern for everybody was the current near meltdown in US financial markets, a problem that the government of President George Bush proposes to solve with a US$ 700 billion rescue package.
One by one leaders of the world have been condemning the US for what is seen as double standards: the US wants to use taxpayer money to solve a mess that is purely the doing of unbridled capitalist greed most espoused by US republicans.
America is famous for relentlessly promoting a "free markets" doctrine which is that it is not good for governments "to interfere in private businesses" and that markets can solve everything by themselves.
This is a notion that the turmoil in the country's financial markets has rendered patently false.
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