BRUSSELS, April 8: Belgian Defence Minister Andre Flahaut came under fire on Thursday for approving an official document asserting that the biggest genocide in the past 500 years occurred in North America.

The 16-page report entitled "Genocides" was released to commemorate this month's 10th anniversary of the 1994 massacre in Rwanda, in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.

The document put North America at the top of a list of genocides, saying an ongoing genocide of Native Americans had claimed 15 million lives since 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas.

The Flemish daily De Standaard accused Flahaut, a Socialist who opposed the invasion of Iraq, of insulting the United States with the report, published as a supplement to a magazine circulated to the armed forces.

Belgium has only recently improved ties with Washington after tensions over Iraq, European Union defence plans and a controversial Belgian war crimes law, since amended, that led to attempts to prosecute senior U.S. leaders. -Reuters