Rwanda cuts diplomatic ties with France

KIGALI (Reuters) - Rwanda broke off diplomatic ties with France on Friday in protest at a French judge's call for President Paul Kagame to stand trial over the killing of a former leader, the event which unleashed the country's genocide.

Kigali's foreign affairs minister Charles Murigande said the government had given France's ambassador to Rwanda 24 hours to leave the central African country and told other French diplomats to go within 72 hours. A Rwandan statement earlier on Friday had accused France of trying to topple the government.

"We in the cabinet have decided to cut our diplomatic relations with France," he told Reuters. Rwanda has also recalled its ambassador from Paris

France said it regretted Rwanda's decision.

"Rwandan authorities told our ambassador in Kigali verbally today of their decision to break off diplomatic ties, with the decision taking effect on Monday, November 27," the French foreign ministry said in a statement.

"We regret this decision," the ministry said, adding: "We are taking all the necessary measures."

Thousands of Rwandans protested in the capital on Thursday after 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 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.

Bruguiere's investigation followed a complaint by the families of the French crew flying Habyarimana's plane and the leader's widow Agathe.

"WAGING WAR"

The crash, which Hutu extremists blamed on Tutsis, was used to fan the flames of ethnic hatred and launch a slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus over 100 days.

Kagame, a Tutsi, is revered by many genocide survivors because his rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, defeated the Hutu extremists in a march across the country to Kigali.

Rwanda said France was trying to bring down its government.

"For the last 12 years, France has waging both overt and covert war against the government of Rwanda hoping to overthrow it and re-instate to power allies and perpetrators of the genocide," a foreign ministry statement said.

Rwanda was a Belgian colony until independence in 1962. France maintained close links with the Francophone country from 1975 to 1994, providing financial and military support to Habyarimana's government.

Rwanda last month launched a probe into France's alleged role in the genocide. It accused France of backing Habyarimana's government and training soldiers it knew were plotting to commit the massacres. Paris denies the charges.

Bruguiere said there was evidence Kagame and his military staff devised the operation to shoot down Habyarimana's plane, which was hit by a missile in April 1994. There were three French crew members on the plane.

Kagame has immunity under French law but Bruguiere urged the U.N. tribunal on Rwanda's genocide to try him.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said: "Judge Bruguiere has filed international arrest warrants but he did this on his own authority and in total independence."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061124/...anda_france_dc

LOL....and these are the people that the Dems thought we should be working closer with?? :stoned:

If the US Army is going to be anywhere.. it should be Africa. That genocide has been happening for decades.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BobBong

If the US Army is going to be anywhere.. it should be Africa. That genocide has been happening for decades.

---

...sorry...Bob....if the U.S. Army.. needs to go anywhere...it needs to come the fuck home...they got a bad taste of Africa..in 1993.....ex. Blackhawk Down... "think it's high time we went"...(home)...

..on another note...I have been trying..to find something postive about this war in Iraq..the only thing I can think of...the U.S.Army will be the best trained/most experienced..Urban Warfare army in the world...with the British army.....a Close Second...as usual.....it's in the bloodline...

If You Don't Agree With This...I wouldn't blame you..one damn bit......

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BobBong

If the US Army is going to be anywhere.. it should be Africa. That genocide has been happening for decades.

---

The last place we need U.S. troops is to fix another France screw up!


http://libcom.org/history/1990-1994-...-war-in-rwanda
The Rwandan Patriotic Front
Just as an economic crisis was breaking in the late 1980s the Habyarimana Government faced a new armed threat. In neighbouring Uganda the National Resistance Army led by Yoweri Museveni had taken power in 1986. Many Tutsis, refugees from persecution in the early 1960s, had fought with the rebels. They now formed the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). Although led by Tutsis the RPF was 40% Hutu in composition.

In September 1990 it conquered territory in the north of the country and quickly gained support from Hutu farmers.

France arms and trains the killers
Habyarimana would soon have fallen to the the well armed and trained RPF but for French military intervention. In October 1990 French forces seized Rwanda's international airport and turned the tide against the rebels.

The battle with the RPF was used as a pretext to arrest up to 8,000 people in the capital Kigali, mostly Tutsis, and to launch pogroms in the countryside.

Quote:
â??There were beatings, rapes and murders. Rwandan intelligence distributed Kalashnikovs to municipal authorities in selected villages. They gathered with ruling party militants, most of whom carried staves, clubs and machetes... they went from field to field in search of Tutsis, killing thousands... "Civilians were killed, as in any war" said Colonel Bernard Cussac, France's ranking military commander in Kigali.â?� (Frank Smyth, The Australian 10.6.94)

French arms and military advisors poured into the country. In the following two years the Rwandan army grew from 5,000 to 30,000.

The BBC's Panorama program said that the Rwandan Government 'thanked France for help which was "invaluable in combat situations" and recommended 15 French soldiers for medals after one engagement in 1991.' (Reuters World Service 21.8.95)

In 1992 Lieutenant Colonel Chollet, commander of the French forces in Rwanda, became President Habyarimana's defacto army chief of staff. In February 1993 French forces again beat back an RPF attack.

Cutting across all this were pressure from Belgium and from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) for Rwanda to agree to a power sharing deal with the RPF. The OAU wanted to assert its own tattered authority and to prevent the conflict destabilising central Africa.

Under this pressure Habyarimana allowed the reintroduction multi-party politics in June 1991, and brought moderate Hutu opponents into his Cabinet in 1992.

This seems to have hardened sections of the ruling elite around a violently racist solution to the crisis. They now stepped up the organisation of the Hutu militias.

The United Nation's human rights investigator for Rwanda, Rene Degni-Segui, later recounted

Quote:
â??a radio and television campaign inciting violence, distribution of arms to civilians and militias at year-end, military training of militias between November 1993 and March 1994 and lists of opposition leaders to execute... Mr Degni-Segui laid responsibility on high-ranking political officials, including "certain ministers" of the interim government, the presidential guard, the armed forces and paramilitary police as well as certain local authorities.â?� (The Age 2.7.94)

French forces superintended the organisation of the militias, known as the Interahamwe. Janvier Africa, son of a Rwandan diplomat, and a former Interahamwe member, described French involvement:

Quote:
â??We had two French military who helped train the Interahamwe. A lot of other Interahamwe were sent for training in Egypt. The French military taught us how to catch people and tie them. It was at the Affichier Central base in the centre of Kigali. It's where people were tortured. That's where the French military office was... The French also went with us Interahamwe to Mount Kigali, where they gave us training with guns. We didn't know how to use the arms which had been brought from France so the French military were obliged to show us.â?� (Quoted in The Age, 23.6.94 p12)

Amnesty International has made similar allegations against the French government (Financial Times 12.7.94).

The genocide
In early April 1994 Habyarimana signed the Arusha peace accord accord with the RPF, at which he was suspected by his supporters of agreeing to share power with Tutsis â?? the former ruling minority group of Rwanda and Burundi. Returning from Arusha on 6 April he was killed when his plane was shot down, almost certainly the work of his own Presidential Guard. Less than 30 minutes later - even before his death was announced - the massacres began.

Have a good one!:thumbsup:

If I was the ambassador to the UN for france... I was given 24hrs to get the F out...... I would be gone in 24 mins...LOL


So Sad that a million people Had to die.....

O.K......let me "throw out a lil' rope" for everyone here.

The French president was Francois Mitterand and Chirac was elected French President in "95".
Some more goooood reading also:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/index.html

Wonder what kind of response I'm lookin' for??????:D

Have a good one!:thumbsup:

Let me guess.....

The Islamic Hutus...are killing the


Catholic Tutsie..............


surprise surprise.....

what up P4B?

Direct French involvement is basically PROVEN with a total of 30,000 of their troops on the ground at the time. Their "so called" safe haven for the genocide survivors was actually a safe haven for the people that did the act.

I read quite a bit on here on how WE should have impeachments; there SHOULD be war crime trials on Rumsfeld in Germany. HMMMMMMMMMMMMM.....I'll just leave that as hint #2.

Come on tree huggers and those of you with the tin foil hats........what am I lookin' for here?????

Have a good one!:thumbsup:

Well, i wasn't suggesting that they should be there.. I completely agree that Canadian,British and American troops alike could come home. However there's the other side of the arguement that if that is done, it will only make things worse.
I simply believe that not nearly enough concentration has been put on Africa in the past decades.. but perhaps that can and will change.

I'd love to visit Africa some day.

Why should we be concerned about Africa you ask?

I guess it's only human.

Bob.

...Africa...will be a low priority...on the backburner..for a long time...to Americans....sad ..but true...

.."human is, as human does"...Forrest Gump..

LOL.....Well ya all get an "F"!!!

Seems damn strange to me that when the U.S. "might" be doing something that there are SCREAMS in here for war crime trials (Rummy), impeachments (Bush), etc........ but if the French just happen to be directly linked to something like the deaths of 800,000 people it's off to the next thread. Viva La France huh?

And some of you folk wonder why some of us feel like the rest of the world can kiss our red, white, and blue asses on issues.

Have a good one!:thumbsup:

I guess my lack of interest is due to the fact I live neither in france or rwanda. Therefore I can simply not give a shit how many people are killed there, or why, or by whom. The people of rwanda/sudan/wherever are screwed, but then we knew that already.