US President George W Bush ended the third leg of his five-nation Africa trip Tuesday after an emotional visit to Rwanda which saw him address the US role in preventing conflicts like the African country's 1994 genocide, according to dpa. Bush visited a haunting memorial of the 800,000 victims of Rwanda's genocide, which the world community is accused of ignoring, saying the experience marked him. Hundreds of thousands of victims of the 100 days of ethnic bloodlust are buried at the memorial which is also a museum of the mass killings that saw ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus slaughtered by Hutus. "The museum had a profound affect on me. You can't help but walk in there and recognize that evil does exist," Bush told reporters in the capital, Kigali. The US, among other members of the international community, has been chided for not doing enough to stop the Rwandan genocide and has heard similar accusations for its sluggishness in ending the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region. The United Nations is set to beef up an African Union force already on the ground in Sudan's embattled province to increase its size to 26,000 in a bid to protect Darfur's people suffering from attacks by government forces, which Washington calls genocide. "In a situation such as that you don't want to send people in as observers, you want to send people in who will help deal with the situation. That's why the mandate in Darfur is important. We are pleased with the mandate in Darfur," Bush said. Bush praised Rwanda's emergence from the depths of the mass killings and signed a bilateral investment agreement with Rwanda - the first such treaty signed by the US with a sub-Saharan African country since 1998. Bush arrived Tuesday morning in Kigali and was greeted by Rwandan President and former rebel leader Paul Kagame, whose forces are credited with bringing an end to the genocide. "Like our continent, the US as a colony fought a war of independence, descended into civil war, before emerging as the world's most enterprising nation," Kagame said at the opening of the US embassy in Kigali. "With America's inspiration and partnership, our country and our continent will also make the transition into the prosperity column," Kagame predicted. Bush also commented on the resignation of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, calling it the beginning of a "democratic transition" on the communist island. Rwanda was the third stop on Bush's six-day Africa trip, the focus of which is fighting poverty, HIV/AIDS and malaria in sub-Saharan Africa and has been charged with avoiding the continent's hot spots, like Sudan, Congo and Kenya, which is stuck in a political crisis. Bush began the second African trip of his presidency in Benin and Tanzania. On Tuesday, he is to travel on to Ghana before ending his tour on Thursday in Liberia, which was created from freed US slaves early in the 19th century.
