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France said on Wednesday Rwandan charges that senior French officials were involved in the African country's 1994 genocide were "unacceptable" but it still wanted to continue to improve ties with Kigali.
Rwanda formally accused 33 French officials on Tuesday of involvement in the genocide and called for them to face trial. Among those named in a report by a Rwandan investigation commission are former Foreign Minister Alain Juppe and former prime ministers Dominique de Villepin and Edouard Balladur.
The move follows a French judge's call in 2006 for Rwandan President Paul Kagame to stand trial over the death of his predecessor in April 1994 -- an event that unleashed the genocide. Rwanda reacted by cutting diplomatic ties with Paris.
"In this report, there are unacceptable accusations made against French political and military officials," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal told reporters.
Kigali has previously accused Paris of covering up its role in training troops and militia who carried out massacres that killed some 800,000 people, and of propping up the ethnic Hutu leaders who orchestrated the slaughter.
France denies that and says its forces helped protect people during a U.N.-sanctioned mission in Rwanda at the time.
Paris says the independent Rwandan commission set up to investigate France's role in the bloodshed, which published the report on Tuesday, is biased.
"One can question the objectivity of the mandate given to the 'Independent commission charged by the Rwandan authorities with gathering evidence showing the French state's involvement in the genocide committed in Rwanda in 1994'," Nadal said.
"We cannot, of course, be surprised by the conclusions of this commission, given its name," he added.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy met Kagame at a summit in December and Sarkozy said the encounter was "the start of a normalisation" of ties.
Nadal said Paris wanted to continue that process despite Tuesday's charges.
"Our determination to build a new relationship with Rwanda, beyond this difficult past, remains intact," he said, emphasising that since June of last year France had arrested six Rwandan genocide suspects at the request of Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania.
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