The United Nations confirmed Monday that the cockpit voice recorder found in a filing cabinet at U.N. headquarters is not linked to a 1994 plane crash that triggered Rwanda's genocide. The so-called black box was discovered in March in the United Nations' Air Safety Unit, where it apparently had sat for a decade after its arrival by diplomatic pouch from the U.N. Mission in Rwanda. The discovery was a major embarrassment for the world body. Even Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it a "first-class foul-up."
| As opposed to the Oil for Palaces program. |
A few weeks later, a private firm and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board in Washington determined that it probably wasn't linked to the crash. The U.N. investigation concluded that the recorder was not from the plane shot down while carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his counterpart from Burundi from a meeting in Tanzania. Nor did it "contain any relevant information about the crash of that aircraft," according to the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services. The report by the U.N. internal oversight office, the world body's watchdog, said U.N. staff at the time did not analyze the recorder or report its existence to senior officials because the box was in such "good condition." Even if the black box had been from the downed plane, it is unlikely that the information inside would have changed the course of events. No one disputes that Habyarimana's plane was intentionally shot down, and there is little the flight data recorder could reveal about who was responsible. |