(Copyright National Post 2007)

Thirteen years after Rwanda's 1994 genocide killed as many as one million people, France is being forced to confront evidence then- president Francois Mitterrand knew up to three years in advance of plans for the slaughter and did nothing to stop it.

Because the country's leaders were more concerned with France's influence in post-colonial Africa and determined to resist the spread of "Anglo-Saxon" influences in Rwanda, they supported, armed, trained and fought with Hutu extremists who were determined to wipe out the minority Tutsis.

According to official documents presented this week in a French courtroom, French officials consistently and deliberately ignored repeated warnings of the pending mass murders.

As early as 1990, the French military attache in Kigali sent a diplomatic telegram to Paris in which he took note of the growing persecution of Tutsis by the Hutu-dominated government of then- president Juvenal Habyarimana.

"It is to be feared that this conflict will degenerate into an ethnic war," Colonel Rene Galinie told officials in the Africa Bureau of Mr. Mitterrand's office.

A day later, Georges Martres, the French ambassador, warned "Hutu farmers organized by [Mr. Habyarimana's party] have stepped up their search for suspected Tutsis in the hills" and "massacres have been reported in the Kibilira region."

In February, 1993, a full year before the genocide, France's foreign intelligence service, Direction generale de la securite exterieure, called a rash of mass murders in Rwanda "ethnic massacres" and warned they might be part of "a vast program of ethnic cleansing against the Tutsis."

A month before that, France's ambassador had warned Rwandan officials would like "to proceed to a systematic genocide."

Nevertheless, French officials refused to alter their support for the Hutu-dominated government.

In one memo to Mr. Mitterrand, officials rejected any suggestion of a French withdrawal.

"It would be a failure of our presence and our policy in Rwanda," the memo said. "Our credibility on the continent would suffer."

On April 2, 1993, Alain Juppe, then foreign minister, noted, "There are risks of massacres if we leave and a risk of African distrust with respect to France."

When Mr. Mitterrand agreed to a suggestion from his prime minister, Edouard Balladur, to send more troops to Rwanda, he added, "The rule is that there is French intervention only if there is external aggression and not if there is a tribal conflict. Here [in Rwanda] it is mixed, because there is the problem of the Tutsis."

French officials have always refused to accept any responsibility for the Rwandan genocide and Mr. Mitterrand maintained he knew nothing of the ethnic tensions that erupted in the former Belgian colony.

In 1994, as the world reeled in horror at the murder of one million people in just 100 days, Mr. Mitterrand insisted he was "never told of the tragedies happening inside the country."

Four years later, a French parliamentary inquiry absolved France of any responsibility for the tragedy and spoke only of "institutional dysfunctions" and "a strategic error" in backing the Rwandan government.

But Rwanda's current Tutsi dominated government has repeatedly accused France of abetting the genocide.

In 1990, Paul Kagame, now the Rwandan President, was leading a Tutsi-dominated rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which was bent on overthrowing Mr. Habyarimana's Hutu-dominated government.

France backed the French-speaking Hutu elite against Mr. Kagame's English-speaking rebels. French military advisors fought alongside the Rwandan army, overseeing the firing of artillery and flying helicopter gunships .

France also provided the Rwandan government with funding to buy nearly $100-million worth of arms and trained local militias that eventually carried out the genocide.

But French officials claimed it was Mr. Kagame's rebel army that actually triggered the genocide by shooting down a French airplane carrying Mr. Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, president of neighbouring Burundi, on April 6, 1994.

Within hours of the plane crash, radical Hutu militias went on a murderous rampage slaughtering Rwanda's Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Mr. Kagame has always denied involvement in the assassination and insists French attempts to blame the RPF are an attempt to deflect attention from France's guilt.

Most historians, diplomats and journalists believe militant Hutus shot down the plane to create a pretext for launching the genocide.

But in 2004, a French prosecutor investigating the deaths of the French crewmen on the downed plane, issued arrest warrants for nine of Mr. Kagame's close aides and urged he should stand trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The accusation infuriated Mr. Kagame, who gave the French ambassador 24 hours to leave the country and shut a French school, a French cultural centre and France's Rwandan world radio service.

His government also struck a special commission to hold public hearings into France's involvement in the genocide, asking it "to determine whether to pursue legal action at the International Court of Justice."

At the same time, six Rwandans lodged complaints with an army court in Paris accusing the French military of "complicity in genocide" and "crimes against humanity."

This week as part of that case, William Bourdon and Antoine Comte, the Rwandans' lawyers, produced a wad of archival material -- including some of Mr. Mitterrand's notes, transcripts of Cabinet meetings and diplomatic messages -- that suggests French officials were very much aware of the potential for genocide in Rwanda.

Now, the lawyers are pressing to have top officials, including Mr. Juppe, Pierre Joxe, a former defence minister, and Michel Quesnot, Mr. Mitterrand's military chief of staff, testify at the hearing.

"These documents, which come directly from the Elysee palace, suggest that President Mitterrand was well aware of what was happening in Rwanda but refused to act," Mr. Comte says.

"Massacres on an ethnic basis were going on and we have evidence that France knew this from at least January, 1993."

pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com