UK: Rwanda's president says it's 'laughable' for France to judge Rwanda.

Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, embroiled in a bitter row with France over what sparked the 1994 genocide, said on Tuesday (December 5) it was "laughable" for Paris to pass judgement on events in the African country. Rwanda broke off diplomatic ties with France last month in protest at a French judge's call for Kagame to stand trial over the killing of a former leader, the event which is widely regarded as the trigger of the country's genocide. The accusations have infuriated the Kagame government which calls them a cover-up for France's alleged role in training soldiers who carried out the genocide. "So the involvement now of France is not doubted in our genocide mainly because of some injustice in this world, we are not supposed to talk about it. We should just keep quiet. And let the French now turn around and judge us - judge we who fought these genocide forces that was supported by France. It is a laughable matter in my view and we hold it in contempt and it is not going to work," Kagame told the Chatham House think-tank in London. The row with France erupted when anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere issued arrest warrants for nine associates of Kagame over the 1994 shooting down of a plane carrying former President Juvenal Habyarimana. The downing of the plane is widely seen as the spark for the 100 days of killing that claimed the lives of 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. Bruguiere's investigation followed a complaint by the families of the French crew flying Habyarimana's plane and the leader's widow Agathe. "Does this mean therefore that Rwandan judges, or other judges for that matter in the continent, are going to be able to indict the French officials or French military officers who actually were in Rwanda doing all these things or this is only a monopoly of a French judge? These are some of the questions that arise and any way, that has led it to a serious misunderstanding between us and we object to any suggestion that RPF is the guilty party and the French have the right now to be the ones to judge Rwandans... unless we give credence to some belief that maybe Africans are some kind of chickens just there to pick and choose and fry them in the oven as you want. And I think some of the things we owe our people is to stand up to this kind of attitude and bullying and injustice. I'm very happy to be part of that struggle," said Kagame. Kagame, a Tutsi, is revered by many genocide survivors because his rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), defeated the Hutu militants in a march to Kigali. Kagame has blamed French-backed Hutus for shooting down the plane. Rwanda has also accused France of trying to bring down its government.

ITN Source | December 6, 2006

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