Kigali: Under fire from Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo for “funding” the controversial UN “Genocide” report, ex-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan exclusively tells RNA he has nothing to do with the document.

Mushikiwabo accused Annan at a press conference on Tuesday of being responsible for the damning contents in the 600-page report. RNA exclusively reported on the comments made by the Foreign Minister.

Now, the Ghanaian ex-UN chief has responded in an unrequested statement sent to RNA through his office at the Kofi Annan Foundation in Accra. Coincidentally, he also separately made speech on Thursday on agriculture in Africa which praises Rwanda.

"Mr Annan regrets the comments made by the Foreign Minister of Rwanda Louise Mushikiwabo in Kigali on 31 August,” said his spokesman, in the brief statement. 

Mushikiwabo said the involvement of Kofi Annan in the “making of this report is there. There is no question about it.”

Describing the ex-UN chief as a “man who has never taken his responsibility”, Mushikiwabo said Kofi Annan who was head of peacekeeping at the UN headquarters in 1994, “failed miserably”.

“I am not surprised and my Government is not surprised that he would be the one making sure that there is funding for this kind of report to ensure that it was an important gesture he would pose before he leave office,” said Mushikiwabo.

However, the former UN Secretary-General and 2001 Nobel Prize for Peace winner says in a statement that “ he has had no involvement in the findings of this draft report."

Ex-UN boss and the UN Human Rights Commission came under fierce scrutiny at the press conference as government claimed they have deliberately continued to “diminish” the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis.

Mushikiwabo accused the Commission of asking for elections for purposes of “cleaning up, sanitizing [and] providing legitimacy to individuals and groups” which had committed the Genocide in Rwanda.

“Before the bodies were even buried in this country this UN human rights commission was calling for elections,” said Mushikiwabo.

Meanwhile, in the Ghanaian capital Accra, Kofi Annan spoke at major forum on agriculture where he named Rwanda among only “five” country on the continent that have made significant progress to end hunger.

The Nobel Peace laureate told delegates at the forum that calls on African governments to give priority to agricultural funding are starting to bear fruit, naming Rwanda.

"We have long called on African governments to break from the past practices of underfunding agriculture and curtailing the development of the private sector," Annan said, according to AFP news agency.

"Now this ...is happening. African governments are making changes," he said, citing at least five countries where notable strides have been recorded.

Food production soared by 16 percent in 2008 in the small central African country of Rwanda, while Malawi in southern Africa has become a net exporter of maize in four year consecutive years.

The arid west African country of Mali now dedicates 14 percent of its national budget to agriculture, Annan said.

Tanzania and Ghana are also included in the statistics.