France has received a letter from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) inviting France to initiate proceedings against Callixte Mbarushimana, who is suspected of having participated in the Rwandan genocide, reports the news agency AP, quoting Jean-Baptiste Mattei, a French ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson on 28 June. Mbarushimana, a former UNDP employee in Kigali, is now living in Paris, after being granted refugee status in 2003. The letter, says Mattei, informs France that Rwanda has issued an arrest warrant against the suspect and promises that in the event of a trial, the UN would hand over any evidence in its possession. In 2001, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) dismissed the case for lack of evidence. The ICTR instigated proceedings after the Kosovo courts, under UN supervision, refused an extradition request from Kigali. Since this resulted in Mbarushimana losing his job, the UN granted him 47,635 USD in damages at the end of 2004. After this highly convoluted process, the UN is finally appealing to French justice to try the suspect on the basis of universal jurisdiction. The UNDP letter "will be swiftly sent to the competent legal authorities, since it is the prosecutor's decision whether or not to instigate proceedings", says the French foreign office spokesperson.