Rwanda Rebels Reject French Role in Strife
France is seeking partners to intervene militarily to stop the slaughter in Rwanda, but Rwandan rebels said Thursday that a French role would make matters worse.
Violence that erupted in April after Rwanda’s president was killed in a plane crash has left hundreds of thousands of people dead. Most were minority Tutsis, killed by the Hutu-majority army and militias, or Hutu moderates killed by extremists.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who proposed intervention Wednesday, is scheduled to visit Senegal and Ivory Coast today, in part to discuss African involvement in ending the bloodshed.
Juppe told the French Senate that any intervention would be of limited duration and aimed only at “protecting people threatened with extermination.”
“Others must come with us, and we are in the process of contacting our European and African partners,” he said.
Rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, in a broadcast on their Radio Muhabura, said France “is incapable of making the situation in Rwanda better.”
The Tutsi-dominated rebels hold France indirectly responsible for the slaughter because of France’s past military assistance to the Hutu-led government.
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