Rwanda moving forward to a unified, peaceful, just and democratic country, Kagame tells The New York Times

During his weeklong official visit to the United States of America at the invitation of US President George W. Bush, the Rwandan President, H.E. Paul Kagame granted an interview to Kate Doty of the New York Times that focused on talks with President Bush, relations with the US, post-genocide developments in Rwanda, the democratization process, and the challenge of HIV/AIDS.

Excerpts below:

Question: How was your visit with President Bush today?

Answer: It was a very good meeting. I had a very good discussion with the President. We discussed issues relating to our bilateral relations. The US government is becoming increasingly involved with Rwanda, supporting our efforts in fighting HIV/AIDS and poverty. The US administration has created some initiatives in these areas from which Rwanda will benefit. We appreciate that.

We also discussed regional issues. I briefed President Bush on the security situation in the Great Lakes region, the progress being made and the challenges we continue to face. I believe that President Bush had a good sense of the situation.

Question: Do you want to make Rwanda a country where everyone is Rwandan, not Hutu or Tutsi?

Answer: Yes. And I believe that we are already on the path towards achieving that. This has been made possible through the unity and reconciliation process, through education, debates about our history and clear analysis about where things went so badly wrong. We are convinced that we must move forward. We cannot be held hostage by our past, we can only draw lessons from the past and use these lessons to move forward. That is what we are doing.

Question: What are you moving forward to?

Answer: We are moving towards a unified country, where there is justice, human rights, peace and democracy for everyone, a nation that works towards creating prosperity and development. That is what we are moving forward to.

Question: How can you ensure that Genocide will not happen again in Rwanda?

Answer: Well, we must keep raising our concerns, making sure people understand and urge them to draw lessons from our history. We must also urge everyone to be part of the solution to ensure that it does not happen again. Government has its part to play, but civil society and ordinary people are also involved and playing a crucial role.

Question: What improvements do you see in the future for Rwanda?

Answer: Firstly, one must look back to where we are coming from, the situation in 1994 and the history before that. Today we have peace and stability, with people going about their normal business happily, people living with each other peacefully across the country. We are going through a democratization process and elections have been taking place at the grassroots level up to the district level, the people have for the first time been involved in the constitution-making process, which will reflect their ideas and concerns. All these are signs of the tremendous progress we have made.

On the economic front, we have registered steady GDP growth of 36.2% for the last three years, agriculture is improving, health issues are being addressed as well as education. We have moved from about 60% primary school enrollment to over 82%.

Question: What is left to be done?

Answer: To consolidate these achievements, maintain the momentum and to move forward. We must also look at Rwanda as part of the region in which we would like to be integrated. Our long term vision is regional integration, which may help absorb some of the problems of individual countries in the region.

Question: You are planning to hold elections this year. When?

Answer: We are first holding a referendum on the new constitution on May 26th. We have not yet fixed the exact date of the presidential and parliamentary elections, but we think that they will both take place about three or four months after the referendum.

Question: What was your agenda when you came to Washington? Is there anything that you specifically wanted to achieve?

Answer: Yes. Specifically we would like to strengthen our bilateral relations, and to strengthen the partnership that we have in implementing reform processes in Rwanda. These processes include democratization and the elections planned for later this year, the constitution-making process, which is close to completion, and also economic and development issues, which involves the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Question: How is the United States involved in Rwanda right now?

Answer: I believe that the US is engaged and helpful to Rwanda. They are involved in agriculture, education and health particularly in fighting HIV/AIDS. My sense is that the US certainly has many commitments in all parts of the world, but we can still convince them to do more in Rwanda. This is our intention.

Question: What support are you looking for specifically in fighting HIV/AIDS?

Answer: We have preventive, treatment and counseling programmes already in place. We have also opened a centre for treatment and research. All these require a lot of resources to run. We would like support to develop the capacity of the treatment and research centre to enable it effectively deal with the challenge throughout the country. The preventive and treatment programmes are very costly. We would like support to supplement our own efforts and contributions.

Question: What is the percentage of HIV/AIDS infection in Rwanda right now?

Answer: It is about 13% in a population of about 8.1 million. Women and children constitute about 60% of those infected. Our treatment and prevention programmes begin with these most vulnerable groups. We also focus on Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) programmes.

Question: Mr. President, do you find it difficult to ask for aid from a country that virtually ignored Rwanda in 1994?

Answer: Well, asking for aid, in the first place, is very difficult indeed. Whether it is from a country that ignored us in 1994 or one that did not. Being a beggar is a very difficult thing, and begging from someone who will ignore you is a bit more difficult.

Our aim in Rwanda is that asking for aid should be a transitional measure. We use this aid to build our own capacities, so that eventually we will get out of the cycle of begging and become self-reliant, relying on our own capacities and resources. It will take a long time understandably. But that is our vision.