France ready to cooperate in genocide probe, envoy says

France is ready to cooperate with the government of Rwanda when it begins its investigation of the role of the French in the 1994 genocide, an official said on Thursday.

"I have stated it clearly in different meetings with government officials that France is ready to cooperate in good spirit and goodwill with the [Rwandan] commission," Dominique Decherf, the French ambassador, told IRIN in the capital, Kigali.

Rwanda's cabinet adopted a decision to set up an independent commission to gather the evidence of France’s involvement in the genocide where 937,000 people died, according to the Rwandan government.

In April, when Rwanda commemorated the 10th anniversary of the genocide, President Paul Kagame accused France of having knowingly trained and armed the government troops and Hutu militia, who have largely been blamed for the genocide.

However, France has always denied involvement in the killings and a French parliamentary commission in 1998 cleared France of responsibility for the genocide while also admitting that "strategic errors" had been made.

The Rwandan National Assembly recently appointed a select committee to draft the mandate of the commission of inquiry, which would be debated during a plenary session before the end of this year.

Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Murigande welcomed Decherf's remarks saying he hoped the move would be in the spirit of improving the strained relationship between Rwanda and France.

Bilateral relations between the two countries have remained shaky, characterised by accusations and counter accusations, with the post-genocide Rwandan government accusing France of having played a patronage role in the genocide.

Kagame accused France of taking part in the genocide after a French newspaper, Le Monde, published articles blaming him for ordering the shooting down of the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana.

Habyarimana's death sparked a wave of mass killings and plunged the country into a decade of war that is only now slowly abating.

The newspaper reports were based on a six-year inquiry by French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who was asked to investigate the crash by relatives of the French flight crew.