French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Rwanda on Thursday for a landmark visit aimed at mending ties with Kigali, which accuses France of aiding the 1994 genocide.
He was scheduled to lay a wreath at a memorial for victims of the genocide and to meet his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame for talks, in an effort to open a new chapter in bilateral relations.
Sarkozy’s visit — the first by a French president since the genocide — comes three months after the official resumption of diplomatic relations between Kigali and Paris following a three-year hiatus.
“He will say some strong things, but not apologise,” a senior aide to Sarkozy told Agence France-Presse (AFP) before the French delegation embarked on its African tour, which passed through Gabon on Wednesday.
“This reconciliation with Rwanda ends a major irritant which, because of accusations of complicity in genocide, hurts France’s image on the continent.”
Kigali broke off relations in late 2006 after French anti-terrorist Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere implicated Kagame’s entourage over the assassination of former president Juvenal Habyarimana, the event considered to have triggered the 1994 genocide.
Rwanda responded by releasing a report accusing about 30 senior French political and military figures of complicity in the genocide, in which an estimated 800 000 people, essentially Tutsis, were killed.
Prior to the rupture, Kigali had already accused France of complicity in the genocide on the grounds that Paris backed the former regime of Habyarimana against the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the former rebel movement led by Kagame that took power in 1994 after putting an end to the genocide.
Paris has always denied the accusations.
Mending relations
On his election in 2007, Sarkozy, who did not occupy a key post in 1994, announced his intention to mend relations with several African countries that had fallen out with France, among them Rwanda.
But, despite two meetings with Kagame and the apparent wish on the part of both parties to improve ties, the continued refusal by Paris to bury the procedure started by Bruguiere remained a stumbling block.
A series of rulings by the French legal system eventually reassured Kigali.
“Rwanda eventually accepted that the French government was not behind the actions of the French legal system,” commented one French official.
Even if the two countries have reconciled without France apologising, many Rwandans would still like Sarkozy to recognise France’s responsibility.
“If he offered an apology that would be much better,” Rwanda’s Culture Minister Joseph Habineza told AFP just ahead of the visit.
In Paris, political and military figures who were prominent in 1994 are worried that Sarkozy may go too far.
In early 2008 French Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner, said to be close to Kagame, angered them by evoking “political mistakes” on the part of France at the time of the genocide.
Sarkozy’s every gesture and word will be under close scrutiny on Thursday.
Two years ago he spoke of “failings or errors” on the part of France but his entourage predicted he would not go as far as Belgium and the US, who have both presented an apology.
“It’s not a case of forgetting the past but rather of looking towards the future,” is what one official in Paris described as the key message.
Kigali is reportedly keen to attract French investors and several bilateral economic issues are to be discussed during Sarkozy’s brief trip. — AFP