During his first visit to France since the 1994 genocide Rwandan President Paul Kagame repeated his will to “move forward”, to “overcome past disputes” and enter without delay into the second phase of reconciliation.

By Franck Petit, Paris

Kagame’s three day visit to Paris, from the 11th to the 13th September, would surely not be enough to overcome the strained relations that have existed since 1994 - Rwanda has always maintained allegations of French complicity in the genocide. Kigali broke off diplomatic ties in 2006 after a French judicial inquiry fingered president Kagame in the April 6 plane attack which triggered the violence. That investigation is still ongoing, now with a new judge and a more balanced approach, and Rwanda is waiting for ballistic results conducted by French judge Marc Trevidic in Kigali on September 2010. The recurrence of tensions may well depend on their results, now scheduled before the end of this year.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy made the first step towards reconciliation by visiting Kigali on 25 February 2010. He publicly acknowledged a series of “mistakes” made in 1994 and assessed “a form of blindness in not seeing the genocidal dimension” of what was unfolding.

Two days after Kagame’s visit, Sarkozy further explained his position at an unofficial lunch with nine historians at the Élysée Palace, as French daily Le Figaro reported: “I went as far as I could as a president to settle the past and renew our links. We didn’t have to repent, because we were the only ones there, unlike the Americans or the British. We might have made mistakes, but we also saved people.”

This compromise is hard to swallow for the current French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, who occupied the same post during the genocide, and was personally targeted in 2008 by the Mucyo Commission as an “accomplice” of the massacres. To avoid the heavy Rwandan delegation – no less than five ministers and more than a hundred businessmen – he went on a diplomatic visit to the Pacific. Number two in the French order of protocol, the Senate president, also found no room in his agenda to meet the delegation. Some MPs and high-ranking officials of the military Opération Turquoise, conducted by France in 1994 in Rwanda, expressed harsh opposition to the visit.

But 17 years later, both leaders seem to have common interests. Kagame needs to diversify his support, while his traditional Anglo-Saxon allies are critical of his democratic governance – as in the Africom report, last June in Washington. London too did not appreciate assassins being sent to target Rwandan dissidents last May on its soil, during Prince William’s wedding. And inside Rwanda, several officials close to the president defected last year. “Rwanda and Africa are now entering in a new area of their development”, describes president Kagame during a conference he gave at the French Institut for International Affairs. “Now is the time to adjust our relationship and accept our new role”, he said.

“The history between our two countries has been very difficult, but we can’t wait for excuses before moving forward. Because in this changing world, France and Rwanda need each other”, added Rwanda Foreign Ministry Louise Mushikiwabo, who later explained that Kigali is now “very much interested by West Africa”, where it signed five cooperation agreements in the last two years. On the French side, strong engagements in Ivory Cost and Libya show what Nicolas Sarkozy wants to be seen as signs of a “new African policy”. In that context, that reconciliation symbolizes a break with the past, even if no more immediate benefits are expected.

Openly marked by realpolitik, Kagame’s visit left little room for “judicial diplomacy”. But backstage, the judicial files remain a major point of progress as well as potential tension between France and Rwanda. During his 2010 visit to Kigali, President Sarkozy promised to make sure that Rwandan genocide suspects living on French soil be “found and punished”. Since that time, judges and investigators have been travelling to Rwanda on a regular basis, filling up the 20 cases currently opened by four Parisian judges, while a specialized war crimes unit is scheduled to open in Paris, with more human and financial resources, on 1st January 2012.

“We can see significant moves on the judicial side”, says former International Tribunal for Rwanda expert witness professor André Guichaoua. “But to date, none of these proceedings appear to be ready for a trial, and we are not far from exceeding the provisional detention delays for some of the defendants. Apart from that, cases have also been opened against the French soldiers suspected of rape during the Operation Turquoise. We can’t tell today what the conclusions will be.”

“What we ask, what we hope is that things move forward”, said Rwandan Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said during Kagame’s visit. So long as things move forward, there is no problem. But justice must be seen to be done.”

On Wednesday 28, a Parisian court will announce its decision on the extradition of the former president's widow, Agathe Habyarimana, considered as a “big fish” by Kigali but ignored by the ICTR. The same day, the court will have to decide on wether a former minister of the interim government, Hyacinthe Rafiki Nsengiyumva, arrested near Paris on August 9, could be released while waiting for the French judges answer to another extradition request from Kigali – which had, to date, always been rejected.