FRANCE -RAWANDA- FRAMES : MUSE REPORT

Kigali : France bears significant responsibility for enabling the genocide in Rwanda and still refuses to acknowledge its true role in the 1994 horror, said a report commissioned by Kigali that was released Monday.

The damning report, commissioned in 2017 and running to nearly 600 pages, labels France a  ''collaborator'' of the extremist Hutu regime that orchestrated the pogrom of some 800,000 people and outright rejects the position that Paris was blind to their genocidal agenda.

The years-long investigation by US- law firm Levy Firestone Muse said France knew a genocide was coming but remained ''unwavering in its support'' of its Rwandan allies, even when the planned extermination of the Tutsi minority was clear.

''It is our conclusion that the French government bears significant responsibility for enabling a foreseeable genocide,'' states the Muse report, which drew on millions of pages of documents and interviews with more than 250 witnesses.

It found no evidence, however, that French officials or personnel directly participated in the killing of Tutsis.

France has long been accused of not doing enough to halt the massacres, and the Muse reports follows the publication last month of a separate inquiry into the same events commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron. [AFP]