The Chief of Staff of the French Armies, General François Lecointre, on Sunday deemed "unbearable" and "completely mad" the accusations about the role of the French army during the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. "C ' is an insult to our soldiers, ”he insisted.
The chief of staff of the French armies, General François Lecointre, on Sunday deemed "unbearable" and "completely mad" the accusations about the role of the French army during the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.
"I read accusations that I find unbearable and completely crazy," said François Lecointre, who himself took part in Operation Turquoise organized by France in Rwanda - he was then a captain - on the BFM TV channel.
"An insult to our soldiers"
"It is crazy to imagine that the soldiers who were engaged in Turquoise were going there for anything other than to stop the massacre of Tutsis by the Hutus," he added.
"It is completely inconsistent, foolish to imagine anything else. It is an insult to our soldiers," he insisted, adding that he saw "no objection" to the archives on this period being open.
According to the UN, around 800,000 people, mainly in the Tutsi minority, were killed in three months in massacres unleashed after the attack on President Habyarimana's plane on April 6, 1994.
Recurring source of controversy
Operation Turquoise was a military-humanitarian intervention launched by Paris, under a UN mandate between June and August of the same year.
Its detractors believe that it was in fact aimed at supporting the genocidal Hutu government.
The gray areas on the role of Paris before, during and after the genocide of the Tutsis remain a recurring source of controversy in France and poison relations with Kigali for more than 25 years.
The questions were revived in February by the revelation of a diplomatic telegram attesting that France had decided in July 1994 not to question the Rwandan authorities responsible for the genocide.
This telegram "confidential diplomacy" asked the representative of the Quai d'Orsay at Operation Turquoise to transmit to those responsible for genocide, by "indirect channels", the "wish that they leave the Safe Humanitarian Zone" then controlled by the military French.