Rwanda: we need partners, but no masters

By on June 2, 2010
Three months after Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit in Kigali which had sealed the French-Rwandan reconciliation, Paul Kagamé returns the politeness to the French president by his presence to Nice.

Kigali had broken with Paris in November 2006 as to answer the judge Bruguière’s charges against the president Kagamé in the assassination of his predecessor, Juvénal Habyarimana, on April the 6th 1994. This date had marked the beginning of the Rwandan genocide.
Formerly very hostile to France, president Kagamé is in Nice for the France-Africa summit and he made it well known by the French media. While he had chosen, in the last autumn, to rally his country to the Commonwealth, he seems today to get closer to France in order to compensate his disappointment of for the  Anglo-Saxon world. The United States have been citing, all along these last years, the successful economic actions and the country stability, have just changed the tone at the approach of the presidential election planned on August the 9th.
Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Africa, Johnnie Carson, recently stigmatised, at the approach of the ballot «a series of disturbing actions, taken by the government of Rwanda, which constitute franc attempts to restrict the freedom of expression “. In this context, president Kagamé has reacted and stated that: “the foreign countries have a different interpretation, which we do not share. The elections are going to take place in a free, transparent and peaceful way, even if some people want to destabilise the process by terrorist activities. Our country went through serious problems and complex situations, in recent past, that we had managed correctly …”

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