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September 19, 2024 French

Alain Juppé : « Je pense que ce procès intenté à la France, qui aurait été coupable directement ou indirectement de ce qui se passe, est insupportable et ne correspond en aucune manière à la réalité »

Card Number 3494

Number
3494
Author
Chazal, Claire
Author
Lapeyre, Arnaud
Author
Berrou, Loïck
Date
19 juin 1994
Ymd
19940619
Time
20:00:00
Time zone
CEST
Uptitle
Journal de 20 heures [8:48]
Title
Alain Juppé : « Je pense que ce procès intenté à la France, qui aurait été coupable directement ou indirectement de ce qui se passe, est insupportable et ne correspond en aucune manière à la réalité »
Subtitle
La France a présenté ce matin au Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies un projet de résolution permettant aux soldats d'intervenir dans un cadre humanitaire.
Size
27492653 bytes
Source
TF1
Public records
INA
Type
Journal télévisé
Language
FR
Abstract
- France presented this morning to the United Nations Security Council a draft resolution allowing soldiers to intervene in a humanitarian context. The vote on this resolution could take place on Tuesday [June 21].
- On the spot the fighting and the massacres continue. The Red Cross hospital was bombed in Kigali killing one of the Rwandan employees of the humanitarian organization.
- The roadblocks which delimit the rebel zones are no longer used except in cases of extreme necessity. Nobody ventures near the front line [dissemination of the barrage of interahamwe militiamen]. Civilians who once left the city by full buses are now dependent on evacuations supervised by peacekeepers when they are not delayed or canceled due to the fighting.
- The supply of humanitarian aid to the capital has also become uncertain. Gérard Larôme, "Emergency Cell Director" [at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs]: "We always have in mind to land humanitarian planes directly in Kigali".
- Interview with Alain Juppé by Claire Chazal: "I do not see which great power or which member of the United Nations Security Council could oppose such an initiative. […] I would like to insist on the fact that we are deploying a lot efforts to convince the Rwandan Patriotic Front that this operation is not directed against it We will have contacts this week with the Rwandan Prime Minister appointed under the Arusha Accords, who was therefore recognized by everyone. We will also have contacts in New York and again in Paris with RPF officials".
- On the ground, the rebels are hostile to the arrival of the French: they blame Paris for having helped for four years the regime of President Habyarimana who was assassinated on April 6. October 1990, commotion in Kigali: the Patriotic Front of Rwanda is already advancing in the north of the country. Foreign nationals are evacuated under the high guard of French and Belgian paratroopers. It is always to protect French nationals that this contingent was doubled in 1992 to reach 700 men in 1993. To the great satisfaction of Juvénal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda since 1973 and a great friend of France. During these three years, according to reports from Amnesty International and the Human Rights Commission, 10 to 15,000 members of the Tutsi minority will be massacred. According to these same reports, death squads in the service of the regime practice methods that have nothing to envy to ethnic cleansing in Bosnian fashion. Without France finding anything to complain about. It was not until mid 1993 to see the Arusha accords as a notable shift in French politics. There remain three years of very busy relations which do not necessarily make France the best placed country to lead an intervention in Rwanda, even humanitarian.
- Reaction of Alain Juppé: "I am amazed to see the heap of inaccuracies that we read in the press on what has happened in recent years. France is criticized for having supported President Habyarimana as s "he was responsible for what is happening today. I would just like to reiterate a very factual element: it is that he is dead! It is that he was assassinated. So it is the extremists, who 'he was very keen and on which he had managed to impose the Arusha accords of July 1993, hailed by everyone as reconciliation agreements! Including by the RPF. It is thanks to him [Habyarimana] that these So I think that this trial of intent brought against France, which would have been directly or indirectly guilty of what is happening, is unbearable and does not correspond in any way to reality. […] Throughout the year 93, we gradually brought the process of reconciliation. Then there were soldiers. French who prepared the arrival of the RPF! And it all seemed to work: reconciliation was underway, power sharing was happening. There was this assassination, about two months ago, which messed things up. We reacted immediately! By our humanitarian aid! By trying for a ceasefire to be obtained by the great states of the region. And also by asking the United Nations to project a force of 5,500 men on the spot. What did we find? It was because all this was not progressing. That the cease-fire was not respected. That UNAMIR did not arrive. And that's when we thought, 'We can't just keep waiting for these decisions to come to fruition. France must show the example'. We are told: 'It's too late'. Who did it before us? And who today claims to be faster than us? Not many people on the international scene".