provided evidence that the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) failed to pass on to the Security Council information that could have bolstered a case for intervention. The January 11 fax, for instance, "was not delivered to the council members nor were its contents communicated" according to researchers at Human Rights Watch. According to Barnett, UN inaction stemmed from its desire not to get involved in a potentially-risky operation for public relations that could damage the prospects for future peace-building operations since 18 UN troops had recently been killed in Somalia, despite the capacity of UN troops to save thousands of lives. "For many at the UN", Barnett wrote, the moral compass pointed "away from and not toward Rwanda." Instead, the international community resorted to focusing on democratic channels to prevent a crisis from unfolding in Rwanda, and devoted its efforts to the implementation of the Arusha Accords and the creation and maintenance of a transitional government. Only Belgium took an active interest in expanding the mandate of UNAMIR - thanks in large part to their concerns over their large contingent of troops stationed as part of the mission. Even they, Des Forges writes, "failed to invest the energy needed to make the other powers respond". Throughout diplomatic exchanges in this period, French diplomats were supportive of the Rwandan regime, and continued to provide military support to their army, even while they were certainly aware of the preparations for massacres. International response After first failing to heed the warnings of organised mass killings, there is an overwhelming consensus that the international community then failed to recognise that genocide was occurring, delayed and equivocated over the use of the term "genocide", and finally, once the fact that genocide was occurring was beyond any doubt, failed to take any meaningful action to stop the killings. United Nations Since the deployment of UNAMIR, the UN Secretariat, the DPKO, and the Security Council had strictly limited the mandate of the peacekeepers and ensured that it was interpreted as narrowly as possible, in order to avoid any confrontations between peacekeepers and Rwandans. The shooting down of the Presidential plane and the explosion of violence that followed it did not change this approach - hours after the plane went down, General Dallaire pled with DPKO in New York, imploring them to "Give me the means and I can do more" - to which he was told