Laura Bush Visits Rwandan Graves

Laura Bush, standing in a cemetery that holds the remains of 250,000 victims of the 1994 government-orchestrated massacre, paid tribute Thursday to the "precious lives lost" and promised U.S. help as Rwanda recovers.

Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, joined Mrs. Bush and her daughter Jenna at a museum that offers an unsparing, haunting account of the 100-day slaughter in 1994 by Hutu militias that killed nearly half a million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The first ladies and Jenna Bush placed wreaths at one of the giant graves.

Graveside, the entourage bowed their heads in silence to coincide with observations in Britain marking one week since deadly bus and subway bombings in London.

Blair said it was especially poignant for her to be remembering the British dead at a site that marks those lost in Rwanda.

"I am very moved by what I have seen, also distressed that the world looked on while it happened," Blair said.

After touring the museum exhibit, the women, all somber, signed a visitors' book.

"This memorial serves as a tribute to the precious lives lost and a testimony to the courage of those who survived," Bush wrote. "The people of the United States stand with the people of Rwanda as they build a hopeful future."

There were no indications that Mrs. Bush planned to make a direct public link between what happened in Rwanda and the situation now in Darfur.

More than two years of conflict there have left tens of thousands dead and more than 2 million displaced in the Sudan, mostly as the result of a counterinsurgency by Arab, pro-government militias against black African rebels.

Paul Rusesabagina, the lifesaving hotel manager portrayed in the movie "Hotel Rwanda," recently accused the world of failing Darfur now just as it did Rwanda in 1994.

Mrs. Bush flew here from Zanzibar, Tanzania, where she mingled with Muslim children getting an education with U.S. help.

"Mud pies, that looks like a lot of fun," Bush said to wide-eyed, red-uniformed preschoolers flitting around the play yard of the tiny Al Rahma Madrasa Pre-Primary School.

The first lady came to reach out to East Africa's large Muslim community by demonstrating the U.S. commitment to helping the often-disenfranchised population educate its children in its own tradition.

The modest structure in Zanzibar, a vast improvement over the many huts of mud and thatch that Bush passed to get there, is one of 16 schools on the island set up with $1,000 each in U.S. seed money and additional grants.

The U.S. charm offensive with the Muslim community seemed to be working, at least at the micro level.

The children eagerly pawed through tote bags containing White House coloring books, George Bush crayons and books that the first lady and her daughter handed out.

Later, at a teacher training school, Bush announced a gift of 20,000 books that were donated through public and private funding from the United States.

"Zanzibar appreciates your assistance and aid from the United States. Long live America," chanted two teaching students in a poem of greeting.

But the semiautonomous island has significant tensions with he mainland, which sees as worrisome the apparent trend here toward a stricter form of Islam and possibly away from democracy.

Washington, too, remembering the 1998 deadly truck bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, is closely watching an area where anti-Western rhetoric has increasingly been a feature of Friday sermons.

Those concerns were apparent in the increased jitters among Bush's security detail.

The large crowds that greeted Bush's motorcade as it approached a larger town on the island remained almost completely silent and motionless.