Long-lost Rwandan black box at U.N.

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NEW YORK -- U.N. officials yesterday acknowledged that they have long been in possession of an airplane "black box" that may shed light on the mysterious downing of a plane that sparked the 1994 Rwandan genocide that left 800,000 dead.

The flight-data recorder was discovered Wednesday in a locked file cabinet in the peacekeeping department, where it had been left a decade ago by someone in the aviation-safety division.

It had been sent by diplomatic pouch from the U.N. Mission in Kigali and arrived in New York shortly after the crash that killed Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprian Ntayamira.

"I was as surprised as you were to find out that a black box existed, much less in this building," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday afternoon. "From what I have picked up, it sounds like a real foul-up, a first class foul-up. I don't think there has been any attempt to cover up."

French investigators have been seeking the flight recorder as part of their inquiry to why the private jet crashed as it approached the Kigali airport

U.N. officials stressed yesterday that the black box is in "pristine condition" and are investigating whether it had been retrieved from the site of the April 6, 1994, crash.

"It appears that the air-safety officials at the time judged from the condition of the box that it had no connection to the crash that killed the two presidents because it was in pristine condition," said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard. "It seemed like a scientific object that had not been used."

The location of the missing recorder was made public in an investigation by a French judge, Jean-Louis Brugiere. His findings on the plane crash were leaked last week to the French daily Le Monde, which also reported that the flight recorder was at the United Nations.

That report concludes that Rwanda's current president, the former rebel leader Paul Kagame, likely ordered the missile strike that brought down the plane and triggered events that led to the death of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.