Rwandan and French presidents meet in New York amid strained past
Kigali — Rwandan President Paul Kagame has met with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in New York for rare talks, Kigali said on Tuesday, as diplomatic ties remain icy over the 1994 genocide. Kigali has long accused France of complicity in the genocide of some 800,000 mostly ethnic Tutsis, at the hands of Hutu extremists, angering Paris and straining relations. In a statement on Twitter, the Rwandan presidency said that Kagame and Macron discussed "collaboration on issues of mutual interest including peace [and] security in Africa", on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Monday. Ties between Kigali and Paris had been on the mend until 2014 when Kagame repeated accusations that French soldiers were both accomplices and "actors" in the bloodbath. The stormy relationship took an even worse turn when the French judiciary decided in October 2016 to re-open an investigation into the shooting down of former Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane, which triggered 100 d...
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