Statement at the Ministerial Meeting of the UN Security Council on Africa

"As the United Nations Security Council is holding this special session, we should draw lessons from our experiences. We should learn from the failure to anticipate and effectively prevent the crime of genocide in Rwanda which resulted in the decimation of hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings. We should learn from the inability of the Security Council to respond appropriately to the call by African leaders to deal with the crisis in the Eastern part of former Zaire. We should aim at forging ahead a new and true partnership that can enable us together to address, in a sustained manner, the acute problems facing our Continent." - Dr. Salim, September 25, 1997