D'oh! Scandal Rocks "Kerry for President" New York Office UN

Will this story develop over the next few days, or stay far below the fold.

In what Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a “first class foul-up,” the United Nations said today it had discovered a black box sent from Rwanda after a 1994 plane crash that unleashed a genocide in the east African nation.

The black box was found in a locked filing cabinet in the UN Peacekeeping Department’s Air Safety Unit, where it was put by aviation experts who apparently believed its ”pristine condition” ruled out the possibility that it came from the downed Falcon 50 aircraft, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.

The United Nations now intends to send the black box to “a qualified outside body for analysis of its contents” to determine whether it did or didn’t come from the plane that was carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, he added.

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The April 6, 1994 crash of the Falcon killed Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, who had been attending a regional summit in Arusha, Tanzania.

The genocide in Rwanda began as news of Habyarimana’s death spread, and by the time it ended more than 500,000 people had been killed.

Annan said he asked UN peacekeeping officials to investigate a report last week in the French newspaper Le Monde which said an investigation into the crash had accused the United Nations of obstruction – because the world body never opened the downed aircraft’s black box which was sent to UN headquarters in New York.

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Eckhard said on Thursday that he had denied the existence of a black box and ridiculed the idea after checking with senior UN officials.

Annan, who was in charge of UN peacekeeping in 1994, said he was “incredulous” and “surprised” when he was told that a black box had been found at the United Nations.

“From what I have picked up, it sounds like a real foul-up, first class foul-up,” he said. He did not believe there had been a cover-up.

Reminds me of this recent quote:

United Nations overseers say they were unaware of the systematic skimming of oil-for-food revenues. They were focused on running aid programs and assuring food deliveries, they add.

It's not like they're responsible for the whole world, you know.

A must-read on the developing Oil-for-food scandal here.