Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame at inauguration of a Rwanda genocide memorial in Paris: You acknowledged that France could have stopped the genocide, but did not. In response, I described the words as something more valuable than an apology — namely, the truth. NOTE: France backed Rwanda's Hutu-led government militarily and politically throughout the early 1990s, viewing the country through a Francophonie lens and suspecting the Tutsi-led RPF of Anglo-Saxon influence. French officials received warnings of impending massacres but failed to act. Macron acknowledged in 2021 that France "stood de facto by a genocidal regime" — stopping short of a formal apology.