France will consider the implications of the row over its alleged complicity in the Rwandan genocide ten years ago once this week of commemoration is over, Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said. "We will examine the situation in depth, but because of this week of contemplation I have nothing to add at this stage," Barnier told a news conference.
| He didn't look happy, either. |
Rwandan authorities on Thursday reiterated the allegation that France had been involved in the genocide, following a new onslaught by President Paul Kagame, who had accused France of complicity in the massacres of 1994. Kagame's statements during genocide commemorations in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, on Wednesday led France's junior foreign affairs minister Renaud Muselier to cut short his visit. "It is factually correct that France armed and trained members of the former Rwandan army and allied militia, many of whom later took part in the genocide," Richard Sezibera, Kagame's special envoy for the central African Great Lakes region, said Thursday. In response to Kagame's charges, Barnier said: "Serious accusations, contrary to the truth, were made against France. Because we think this week is a week of contemplation and of commemoration and not one for controversy, we chose to withdraw in the usual French manner in a dignified way."
| "Where's my huff? I'm leaving!" |
"They (France) knowingly trained and armed the government soldiers and militias who were going to commit genocide and they knew they were going to commit genocide," Kagame said at a ceremony at the country's national stadium. Pressing the points home Thursday, Sezibera told AFP: "We would hope that they would study the matter in depth. ... We would hope they would come clean on the role of French troops and French officers in Rwanda and we hope that France will no longer deny its role in the genocide in Rwanda."
| Two chances: slim and none. |
The comments from Kigali marked a further degeneration in a diplomatic stand-off between Paris and Rwanda, which has centred on claims that France trained the Hutu extremists who ended up killing some 800,000 people between April and July 1994. The atmosphere worsened last month when the Paris newspaper Le Monde published allegations that Kagame, then head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), had ordered the missile attack on the aircraft of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death sparked the massacres. French government figures from the time such as former prime minister Alain Juppe have angrily denied prior French knowledge of the genocide. Hubert Vedrine, who was a senior aide to Socialist president Francois Mitterrand from 1991 to 1995, said that French action had been aimed at averting the massacres that "everyone" feared, but admitted the policy had failed.
Speaking Thursday on Radio France Internationale, Vedrine said France had trained the mainly Hutu army to defend itself against attacks from Uganda -- which backed the RPF -- and that in return France demanded that Habyarimana's government move to establish power-sharing with the Tutsis. "The objective of this French policy -- alas -- clearly failed. But its aim was to stop a return to massacres, to try to get over this Hutu-Tutsi issue which is still not resolved today," he said.
| "Since our hearts were in the right place, the results do not concern us!" |
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