Misanet / IRIN, 22 November - A French judge is in Rwanda to investigate accusations that France helped the former pro-Hutu administration in its attempt to exterminate Tutsis during the 1994 genocide, a French diplomat told the UN media 'IRIN' today. Rwanda's President Paul Kagame openly has accused France of having assisted the genocidal militias.

"The judge arrived here [in the capital, Kigali] on Monday evening to follow up allegations by six Rwandans accusing France of taking part in the genocide," Dominique Decherf, the French Ambassador to Rwanda, said.

In April 2004, Rwandan President Paul Kagame accused France of training and arming the Hutu militias that have been blamed for having the main responsibility for the 1994 killings, in which an estimated 937,000 Rwandans, most of them Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus, were the target.

Ambassador Decherf said the judge would return to France on Friday, where she would present a report to enable French authorities determine whether or not there was substantial evidence to investigate the case further and set up trial hearings.

Relations between France and Rwanda have long been tense but were strained even more after President Kagame's accusation in 2004 at a ceremony to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide.

President Kagame's remarks came after a report in a Paris daily, 'Le Monde', accusing him of giving direct orders for the rocket attack on then President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane. The death of President Habyarimana, a Hutu, is largely seen as the incident that sparked the genocide.

France became close to President Habyarimana's government shortly after independence and replaced the ex-colonial power, Belgium, as Rwanda's main western backer.

When the Tutsi-dominated rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), first launched its war against the Hutu authorities in the early 1990s, France sent soldiers to Kigali. The French helped stop the RPF advance and then stayed on, officially as military advisers right up to the start of the genocide.

The RPF has its origins among Rwandan refugees - mostly Tutsi - in Uganda. Many RPF leaders are thus more fluent in English than in French and the introduction of English as a second foreign language in Rwanda, in addition to a closer relationship with Washington, has kept relations with Paris at a freezing point.

France has so far denied any direct involvement in the 1994 killings. The sending of a judge to Kigali to investigate the accusations thus is a first signal that France is willing to look into its role in 1994.

By UN media IRIN, edited by afrol News staff

© IRIN / afrol News

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