France, Rwanda have ‘good basis’ to create relationship: Kagame

Rwandan President Paul Kagame said Monday that Rwanda and France have a “good basis” to create a relationship after a landmark report acknowledged French responsibility over the 1994 genocide.

“I think France and Rwanda have a chance now and a good basis on which to create a good relationship as the case should have been,” Kagame told journalists from the France 24 television channel and RFI radio.

“We are in the process of normalisation,” he added.

French President Emmanuel Macron moved to repair ties with Rwanda by commissioning a report by historians into the role of French troops in the genocide, in which around 800,000 people were killed.

It concluded in March that France had been “blind” to preparations for the massacres of members of the Tutsi ethnic group by the Hutu regime, which was backed by France.

Kagame has in the past accused France of “participating” in the genocide, but he said he accepted the findings of the French commission that Paris was not complicit in the killings.

“It’s not up to me to conclude that this is what they should have said,” Kagame said. “It is something that I can accomodate.”

He also welcomed the arrest by French police in May last year of Felicien Kabuga, who is suspected of financing the genocide.

“I think it’s a good start. Maybe more could be done,” Kagame said, adding that there were “still a number of genocide suspects in France whose cases have not been handled the way they should.”

Macron and Kagame held talks on Monday on the sidelines of a conference in Paris dedicated to reducing debt and increasing investment in Sudan.

The two men “welcomed the recent favourable developments and confirmed the objective of going further in the normalisation and deepening of the relationship between France and Rwanda,” a statement from the French presidency said.

Macron is expected to travel to Rwanda in the coming weeks for the first trip by a French president to the country since 2010.