GEN. ROMEO DALLAIRE

In 1994, Gen Romeo Dallaire was the Force Commander of UNAMIR, The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. As the situation deteriorated, he pleaded for logistical support and reinforcements, but the UN Security Council refused and troop numbers were reduced.

Rwanda is a small landlocked country just south of the Equator in the Great Lakes regions of central Africa. Because of its green, hilly terrain it is warmly known as Pays des Mille Collines, 'Land of a thousand hills'.

Its grasslands and small farms support one of the most densely populated areas of Africa. In the mountainous north-west - highest point 4,519m - a chain of rugged volcanoes and Lake Kivu separate it from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Dian Fossey studied Rwanda's mountain gorillas in the Parc National des Volcans for about twenty years, until her death in 1985. The 1988 movie Gorillas in the Mist was filmed on location in north-west Rwanda.

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For many excellent sources of information on Rwanda, and background to the genocide, go to our links page.

Dallaire consolidated his remaining soldiers and focused on providing a few safe areas around the capital Kigali.

He later said, "Rwanda will never ever leave me. It's in the pores of my body. My soul is in those hills, my spirit is with the spirits of all those people who were slaughtered and killed that I know of, and many that I didn't know..."