French minister meets Kagame

French Cooperation Minister Charles Josselin arrived in Kigali on Saturday, the first visit by a French minister to Rwanda since the 1994 genocide. The Rwanda News Agency (RNA) said Josselin’s meeting with Vice-President Paul Kagame marked a “timid beginning” to the normalisation of relations between the two countries. Addressing a news conference after the meeting, Josselin acknowledged the “sensitivity” of bilateral ties which he said were in need of a “review”. “I believe that Vice-President Kagame, just as ourselves, without wishing to forget the past, without either side renouncing their own analyses, their own explanations, deems it right to place the emphasis on the present and, above all, on future cooperation,” he said. Rwanda accuses France of supporting the regime of ex-president Juvenal Habyarimana, saying the French ‘Operation Turquoise’ in 1994 allowed the killers to flee the country. A BBC report noted that Josselin failed to deliver a formal apology. The minister pointed out that France was not alone in making serious mistakes during the genocide. For his part, Kagame said it was up to France to decide what responsibility it bore for the 1994 events. While in Kampala on Friday, ahead of his arrival in Rwanda, Josselin said his government was ready to broker an international conference on security and development in the Great Lakes region, the Ugandan ‘New Vision’ daily reported. He added that President Yoweri Museveni had welcomed the move and that such a conference would “help us have a comprehensive view of the problems in the region”.