Telegraph | News | France accused of genocide by Rwanda's leader: "M Kagame claimed that the French government supplied weapons, logistical support and even senior military planners to the regime of militant ethnic Hutus responsible for the slaughter of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Diplomats and witnesses to the genocide have often accused France of tacit involvement, but Mr Kagame's comments are the most explicit statement of the allegations.
He made them after a French police report, which took six years to prepare, blamed him for the shooting down of a plane carrying Juvenal Habyarimana, Rwanda's then president and an ethnic Hutu, on April 6, 1994.
Mr Habyarimaa's death sparked 100 days of mass killing in Rwanda. Most historians, diplomats and journalists believe that militant Hutus shot down the plane as a deliberate pretext for their premeditated slaughter.
Mr Kagame, an ethnic Tutsi, flatly denied any involvement in Mr Habyarimana's death and launched a blistering counter-attack against France in an interview given to RFI, the French state-run radio station.
'The French supplied weapons; they gave orders and instructions to the perpetrators of genocide,' he said.
'The French were there when the genocide took place. They trained those who carried it out.
'They had positions of command in the armed forces who committed the genocide.
'They also directly participated in operations by putting up roadblocks to identify people by ethnic origin, punishing the Tutsis and supporting the Hutus.'
Journalists who covered Rwanda in the early 1990s reported that French peacekeepers appeared to side with the Hutu government and against the Tutsi-based Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Mr Kagame, which had been responsible for an armed incursion into Rwanda in 1990 from exile.
In at least one case, French troops moved United Nations peacekeepers away from a college where they were protecting 2,000 Tutsis. After the peacekeepers were moved, the Tutsis were slaughtered. Mr Kagame said the police report blaming him for Mr Habyarimana's death was a politically motivated attempt to deflect blame from France."
Diplomats and witnesses to the genocide have often accused France of tacit involvement, but Mr Kagame's comments are the most explicit statement of the allegations.
He made them after a French police report, which took six years to prepare, blamed him for the shooting down of a plane carrying Juvenal Habyarimana, Rwanda's then president and an ethnic Hutu, on April 6, 1994.
Mr Habyarimaa's death sparked 100 days of mass killing in Rwanda. Most historians, diplomats and journalists believe that militant Hutus shot down the plane as a deliberate pretext for their premeditated slaughter.
Mr Kagame, an ethnic Tutsi, flatly denied any involvement in Mr Habyarimana's death and launched a blistering counter-attack against France in an interview given to RFI, the French state-run radio station.
'The French supplied weapons; they gave orders and instructions to the perpetrators of genocide,' he said.
'The French were there when the genocide took place. They trained those who carried it out.
'They had positions of command in the armed forces who committed the genocide.
'They also directly participated in operations by putting up roadblocks to identify people by ethnic origin, punishing the Tutsis and supporting the Hutus.'
Journalists who covered Rwanda in the early 1990s reported that French peacekeepers appeared to side with the Hutu government and against the Tutsi-based Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Mr Kagame, which had been responsible for an armed incursion into Rwanda in 1990 from exile.
In at least one case, French troops moved United Nations peacekeepers away from a college where they were protecting 2,000 Tutsis. After the peacekeepers were moved, the Tutsis were slaughtered. Mr Kagame said the police report blaming him for Mr Habyarimana's death was a politically motivated attempt to deflect blame from France."
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