Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
3 February 2008
Kigali — Government has to be careful with the gestures for a renewal of diplomatic relations with France because of the suspicious language used by top French diplomat on a recent trip to Rwanda, Genocide survivors have demanded.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was in Kigali on a visit observers say was to try to restore the severed relations. Mr. Kouchner and President Paul Kagame exchanged pleasantries calling each other "a friend".
However, following his tour of the Genocide Memorial Center, Mr. Kouchner touched the hot potato in Franco-Rwanda relations - Genocide responsibility. He fell short of admitting French role instead saying there were "political faults".
Mr. Kouchner told reporters: "It was certainly a political fault ... we didn't understand what happened. But there was no military responsibility." The genocide survivors' umbrella organization IBUKA is bitter.
"The Association IBUKA has been heavily offended by these untruthful and arrogant comments, and vigorously denounces them", the grouping said in a statement released Saturday - more than a week after the visit.
IBUKA says Mr. Kouchner - was himself in Rwanda during the Genocide between May 10 to 17 1994, but on pretext of evacuating orphans. When he returned to Paris, the former humanitarian campaigner avoided the use of the word Genocide to describe the events in the country.
"He never used the word 'Genocide' instead emphasizing it as the 'worst humanitarian crisis'. Well aware that had he used the word 'Genocide', it would have weighed strongly on international conscience", IBUKA says.
Current estimates suggest that up to 1.5 million people were massacred by rampaging militias and government soldiers in just 100 days. However, as the RPF rebels took on ground, French soldiers are said to have aided the Genocide machine to flee south and then west to Zaire (DRC).
Corroborated evidence to the government appointed probe into French role shows that French soldiers fought along the militias and government forces. In the south, they put up a 'humanitarian cordon' through which the interahamwe lived and later crossed to Zaire.
French doctors in eastern Zaire are reported to have "deliberately amputated" limbs of wounded Tutsis in a move survivors who went through the ordeal say was to leave them inapt. In the fortified area - the zone turquoise, Tutsis girls as young as 10 years were hunted for and raped.
According to experts brought in by the Mucyo Commission, French diplomats at the UN headquarters ensured an information blackout on Rwanda to prevent any debate. British researcher Prof. Linda Melvern detailed a conspiracy mechanism facilitated by then UN Secretary General Egyptian Boutros Boutros Ghali.
IBUKA says France was aware of the "criminal and ethnic nature" of the regime in power that was implementing the Genocide - supporting them militarily, politically and diplomatically.
Included directly in this fray of support, according to IBUKA are: military chief Admiral Laxande, top military aides to the President - Generals Quesnot and Huchon, and French President François Mitterrand himself.
Top secret memos declassified recently also show that President Mitterrand was personally in charge of the Rwanda dossier and knew exactly what was going on.
Last week, the former foreign minister Allain Juppé said there was nothing to regret about French involvement in Rwanda.
The survivors want government here to remain vigilant in its approach when handling the French because of these mixed signals coming in from different quarters as that would be an infringement on justice.
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