The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, has come in for strong criticism from her own staff in Rwanda following her controversial visit to the country last December.
And it is understood the Rwandan government has told Mrs Robinson she is not welcome to visit the country again.
Senior officials of the Human Rights Field Office in Rwanda, for which Mrs Robinson has responsibility, are reported to be "seething with anger" at her outspoken attack on the Rwandan government and HRFOR itself.
They have told diplomats and non-governmental organisations in Kigali that the remarks made by Mrs Robinson were inappropriate in tone and content and that they exceeded her human rights brief.
However, human rights NGOs are elated that Mrs Robinson spoke so explicitly. "She simply said what had to be said, that this country has major problems," one source said. Junior HRFOR staff have also been supportive of the High Commissioner's comments.
At the end of her visit, Mrs Robinson described the human rights situation in Rwanda as "bleak". She criticised the international community and HRFOR for failing to use methods to facilitate an improvement.
Shunning the normal diplomatic niceties, she attacked the government for failing to make a determined effort to bring together the minority Tutsis, who control the administration, and the majority Hutus. "Political power and decisionmaking have become more and more concentrated," she said before leaving on December 7th.
The remarks were all the more shocking to the Rwandans because of Mrs Robinson's previous cordial relations with the country she visited three times as president.
The Rwandan authorities responded by accusing her of "deliberate omissions and blatant distortions" of her meetings with the government. A spokesman claimed HRFOR's programmes were "ill-conceived and carried out unprofessionally by individuals whose qualifications and general conduct leave a lot to be desired".
Mrs Robinson's statement showed she had failed to grasp what had been going on in Rwanda over the past three years or that she was dependent on "partisan informants", he continued.
Human rights activists say the authorities are making it more and more difficult for local NGOs to monitor human-rights abuses. The RPA has been accused of killing hundreds of innocent civilians in its war against rebels in the north-east of the country.
Senior HRFOR officials feel Mrs Robinson's comments did not reflect the progress made in two tough meetings with the regime strongman, Vice-President Paul Kagame.
Officials say the clash caused major difficulties for HRFOR, which is the UN's largest human rights field operation, with more than 80 staff. The Rwandan authorities cancelled meetings and cut down the flow of information it had previously supplied to human rights monitors.
Dissatisfaction with Mrs Robinson's visit is not confined to HRFOR. The heads of other UN agencies represented in Rwanda were aggrieved that she failed to invite them to participate in her talks with the government.
Violence in Rwanda is currently at its highest levels since the 1994 genocide. The escalating conflict in the north-west has made it difficult for HRFOR to carry out its monitoring activities. Most staff have been confined to the capital, Kigali, since five human rights monitors were murdered last February.
