Africa - Tuesday, August 5, 2008 7:38 - 0 Comments

Rwanda to reveal ‘genocide role’ of French

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7542418.stm

Rwanda’s government is to reveal details of a report containing allegations of French involvement in the country’s 1994 genocide.

The report is expected to contain the names of those alleged to be implicated and the accusations against them.

Some 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days in the 1994 massacre.

Earlier this year France’s foreign minister denied French responsibility in connection with the genocide, but said political errors had been made.

Testimonies

The BBC’s Geoffrey Mutagoma in the capital, Kigali, says a commission set up by the government took nearly two years investigating France’s alleged role in the genocide.

It heard testimonies from genocide survivors, researchers, writers and reporters.

The 500-page document was presented to the government last November, but has not yet been made public.

Last week, President Paul Kagame told a press conference in Kigali that Rwanda had strong evidence implicating France’s role.

In the past his government has repeatedly accused France of arming and training the Hutu extremists who perpetrated the genocide, and of dragging its feet in co-operating with the investigations that followed the massacres.

The two countries have had a frosty relationship since 2006 when a French judge implicated President Paul Kagame in the downing in 1994 of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane, which triggered the killings.

President Kagame has always denied the charges and says Mr Habyarimana, a Hutu, was killed by Hutu extremists who blamed the incident on his Tutsi rebels to provide the pretext for the genocide.

Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu extremists in the genocide.