Rwanda vows probe of French genocide role

Chirac would surely like to give Kagame the treatment meted out to Aristide, another negro who grew too large for his breeches.

KIGALI (Reuters) - Rwanda will probe accusations France helped train killers who took part in the central African nation's 1994 genocide, Rwanda's foreign minister says.

Charles Murigande told reporters on Monday:"It will be an objective exercise, we will share the findings with the French government.,"

A draft law approved by the Rwandan cabinet on Friday created an independent commission to investigate France's role. The law must be passed by parliament before the commission can start its work.

"The commission will collect testimony from survivors and from ex-FAR (former army) and Interahamwe who were involved," Murigande said.

While marking the 10th anniversary of the genocide in April, Rwandan President Paul Kagame told mourners France had helped train fighters knowing that they would commit genocide.

France strongly denies this.

"France takes note of the Rwandan government's decision to set up a national commission to 'gather evidence of France's implication in the genocide carried out in Rwanda in 1994," French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Cecile Pozzo di Borgo said.

MEETING IN PRETORIA

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier and Murigande discussed the matter last Wednesday during a meeting in the South African capital Pretoria, she said.

France and Rwanda have long been at odds over the French role in the genocide in which some 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus died in 100 days of ethnic slaughter.

Murigande denied the move was in retaliation for previous accusations by France over Kagame's involvement in triggering the killings, saying the two countries were trying to improve relations.

Kagame accused France of taking part in the genocide after the Paris newspaper Le Monde published articles blaming him for ordering the shooting down of the plane carrying then-President Juvenal Habyarimana and the Burundian president.

Habyarimana's death triggered Rwanda's mass killings and plunged the heart of the continent into a decade of war and upheaval 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.

THE ORIGINAL