France To Appoint Ambassador To Rwanda In Normalization Push

Muhammad Irfan Published May 27, 2021 | 11:20 PM

French President Emmanuel Macron, who is currently on a visit to Rwanda, announced that France will appoint an ambassador to the African country

PARIS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 27th May, 2021) French President Emmanuel Macron, who is currently on a visit to Rwanda, announced that France will appoint an ambassador to the African country.

"I have invited President [of Rwanda] Paul Kagame to proceed with the appointment of the Ambassador of the French Republic to Rwanda. The position has been vacant for six years. Without this step, it would be impossible to normalize our relations," Macron said at a joint press conference with Kagame.

Earlier in the day, the French leader acknowledged France's partial responsibility for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda for the first time.

On April 7, France divulged archives dating back to the 1994 genocide in the Eastern African nation, which claimed about 800,000 lives.

Macron received a nearly 1,000-page-long report on the matter from the research team, tasked with determining the role of France in Rwanda from 1990-1994, on March 26.

According to the report, France was indirectly and partly responsible for the mass killings of ethnic Tutsi rebels in Rwanda, as it was unaware of the fact that its support of the former government contributed to the genocide.

The genocide in Rwanda began on April 7, 1994, a day after a plane carrying Juvenal Habyarimana, then President of Rwanda and an ethnic Hutu, was shot down over Kigali airport. Habyarimana and the president of neighboring Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, were killed. The plane crash was followed by 100 days of massacres.