WASHINGTON (AFP)— Rwanda has threatened to curtail its cooperation with the United Nations as the world body prepared to release an account highly critical of the African nation.

“We reiterate here what we have already told the high commissioner; namely that attempts to take action on this report -- will force us to withdraw from Rwanda's various commitments to the United Nations, especially in the area of peacekeeping,” Rwanda's Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo wrote to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.
Rwanda accused the United Nations on Friday of trying to deflect attention from its own failures by leaking a draft report accusing Kigali of war crimes in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
The report, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, says Rwandan Tutsi commanders and their rebel allies carried out systematic attacks on Hutus in the DR Congo from 1996 to 1997 that resembled the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The 600-page UN report by Canadian war crimes prosecutor Luc Cote is set to be officially released next month.
“I saw a pattern in the Congo that I'd seen in Rwanda,” Cote told AFP in an interview, referring to the genocide in which Rwandan Hutu extremists butchered an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
His probe did not list a death toll in DR Congo but found evidence suggesting tens of thousands of Hutus had been killed.