« La France et les États-Unis face aux défis d'aujourd'hui », John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington [Réponse à une question à propos du Rwanda]

Juppé, Alain

11 mai 1994

19940511

« La France et les États-Unis face aux défis d'aujourd'hui », John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington [Réponse à une question à propos du Rwanda]

JuppeWashingtonJohnHopkins11mai1994.pdf

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Quai d'Orsay

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Conférence

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After François Mitterrand declared on television on May 10, 1994: "we are not destined to make war everywhere, even when horror strikes us in the face", Alain Juppé , the next day, during a conference at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, went one better by answering a question from the Senegalese ambassador about Rwanda: "I do not believe that the international community can go and police everywhere on the planet and send, wherever people are fighting, interposition forces".

Whereas for President Mitterrand, France does not have to intervene in Rwanda, for Alain Juppé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, the whole international community does not have to intervene. We should therefore leave the killers do their job in peace. According to him, nothing can be reproached to France which had sent a year ago "about 800 men who intervened between the two factions". A curious way of disguising French military support for the Rwandan Armed Forces (RGF). After the arrival of the blue helmets and the withdrawal of the French soldiers, Juppé claims that "a government of national reconciliation has been put in place". It's wrong. The Enlarged-Based Transitional Government (GTBE) provided for by the Arusha Accords was not put in place and when Habyarimana finally agreed to do so, he was assassinated the same evening. While the extremists massacred the Tutsi and the supporters of the peace agreements, a government was formed under the auspices of the French ambassador, therefore of Juppé, comprising only Hutu extremists, while five ministerial portfolios were to be attributed to the RPF. On April 7, 1994, it was a genocide that broke out and not a war. The Tutsi of Rwanda have never been at war against the Hutu. They are not "fighters". They have no weapons and are being exterminated. If the RPF started fighting, it was to oppose the massacres unleashed by the Rwandan army and the militias immediately after the attack on the president. Interposing between the RPF and the killers meant protecting the killers. This is the mission that Alain Juppé wanted to assign to the blue helmets of UNAMIR II in May, but the United States opposed it. This will be the unofficial mission of Operation Turquoise. The French army landed in force on April 9 to watch Rwandan soldiers and militiamen massacre innocent people. The duty of France, a signatory to the United Nations Convention against Genocide, was not to "interpose itself between the fighters" but to arrest the killers. If he had really judged the massacres "épouvantables" (appalling), Alain Juppé would have opposed the withdrawal of the Blue Helmets which he advocated and had voted on April 21, 1994 in the Security Council.