President Kagame Calls for Unity Against Anti-Africans

The New Times (Kigali)
NEWS
December 31, 2006 [/b]
Posted to the web December 31, 2006
Kigali

President Paul Kagame has said that African countries should rise up in unison and resist Western arrogance and meddling in the internal affairs of African countries. Kagame, who was speaking to a team of visiting Ivorian journalists at Hotel Intercontinental on Friday, suggested that African countries should join efforts to fight all anti-Africa mind-set. The President, who was responding to an Ivorian journalist's question about his opinion in regard to a recent call by Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni for an African coalition against France, attacked Western countries for maintaining an arrogant approach towards sovereign African nations.

"My opinion is clear; African countries should form a coalition to fight any anti-Africa attitudes, and certainly among them you find France," he said.

"We Africans belong to ourselves, to Africa, and not to anyone else. None of our (African) countries should been seen as belonging to a certain foreign nation. The West should only come in as partners, not masters," said Kagame, whose apportioning of Rwanda's tragic history to colonialism and post-colonial Western influence is resolute.

Kagame apportioned blame for some Africa's problems to the continent's leaders, who he said, have worked as stooges for the West.

He also lashed out at France and French magistrate Jean Louis Bruguiere over the latter's claims that senior Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) were involved in downing the plane carrying former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana.

"There is an issue of arrogance where a judge in France feels free to indict leaders in Africa; and on the basis of coming from a developed country, thinks that his flimsy dossier will be accepted!" wondered Kagame.

Last month, Bruguiere released a report, which has since suffered a string of criticisms after several of his 'witnesses' disowned testimonies attributed to them.

"Even a person without legal background can see that the dossier is lacking. If he is a serious judge, why doesn't he question the involvement of France in the genocide of Rwanda?" asked the president, who also dismissed the correlation between Habyarimana's death and the 1994 Genocide and emphasised that genocide started in Rwanda way back in 1959.

Thousands of ethnic Tutsis were massacred by extremist Hutu members in 1959 in what became the beginning of atrocities against Tutsis over three decades that climaxed with the 1994 Genocide, which claimed an estimated one million Rwandans.

The President told the Ivorian scribes that today Rwandans have a sense of worthiness as compared to the past. "We are convinced that Rwanda people don't deserve what we went through and we believe the people of Rwanda deserve better."

Asked when he would visit Ivory Coast for the first time considering that his Ivorian counterpart Laurent Gbagbo visited Rwanda, President Kagame said his visit to the West African country was imminent.

"I am looking forward to an opportunity of visiting my brother (Gbagbo) but my visit should be seen in a positive way and not interpreted in a way that might cause problems for anyone," he said.

Pundits aver that France is responsible for fuelling violence in its former African colonies such as Ivory Coast, which is divided between the government-controlled south and the rebel-held north, and in countries in which it gained influence in recent years, such as Rwanda.

Several weeks ago, Kagame criticised French President Jacques Chirac for previous comments that South African President Thabo Mbeki was unfamiliar with Ivorian situation, at a time Mbeki was trying to mediate the warring parties in the world's leading cocoa producing nation.

The leader of the Ivorian delegation, Silvere Nebout, the Presidential Special Advisor in Charge of Communication, delivered a written message to Kagame from Gbagbo.

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