PARIS, Nov 25: Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Saturday repeated accusations that France was implicated in his country’s 1994 genocide in a television interview one day after Rwanda broke off diplomatic ties with its former ally.
The comments are the latest demonstration of the souring relations between the two countries, who have been at loggerheads over machinations that resulted in 100 days of killing during which extremist Hutus murdered 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
“France is implicated in the genocide, there is no doubt about that, no one can have doubts,” Kagame told French TV channel i-Tele in an interview broadcast on Saturday.
Rwanda accuses France of training soldiers it knew would later commit genocide. France denies any wrongdoing, saying its military intervention helped Rwandans.
“On the extent, the degrees of implications, the people involved, the way in which French institutions were involved, these are aspects which will be examined,” Mr Kagame told i-Tele.
“France is a superpower so it thinks that it is always right even when it is wrong,” Kagame said. “We have a will and a reason to fight for our rights and we will.”
The latest diplomatic flare-up between the two countries arose earlier this week when French anti-terrorism magistrate
Jean-Louis Bruguiere called for Kagame to stand trial at a U.N. court over the killing of a former Rwandan president.
Mr Bruguiere also issued arrest warrants for nine of Mr Kagame's associates over the 1994 shooting down of a plane carrying former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana.
The crash, which Hutu extremists blamed on Tutsis, was used to fuel hatred and triggered the massacre.
Mr Kagame has already denounced Mr Bruguiere's comments as the `justice of bullies, arrogance’.—Reuters
