Answer:
Government officials downplayed the severity of the crimes committed.
Explanation:
Remember, it was a question asked by a journalist to a US state department press conference in which the US spokeswoman Christine Shelley avoids applying the term "genocide" to the what was happening in Rwanda. Despite the fact that there had been an ethic cleansing of the Tutsi tribe, with more thousands of dead bodies on the streets. Thus, government officials initially showed a lack of admittance to the severity of what was happening in Rwanda.
