France has been accused by Rwandan President Paul Kagame of "direct involvement" in the 1994 genocide.
He told the French state-owned RFI radio that French elements provided weapons and training, and gave orders to those who killed some 800,000 people.
The president was speaking a week after French daily Le Mondepublished a police report that blamed him for a rocket attack that precipitated the massacre.
The report concluded that Mr Kagame gave direct orders for the rocket attack on the-then Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana's plane. Burundi's then-president Cyprien Ntaryamira was also killed in the rocket attack. Mr Kagame has denied the claim.
The assassinations are blamed for triggering the slaughter of Tutsis and Hutu moderates during 100 days of bloodshed.
Mr Kagame was head of the mainly Tustsi rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front at the time that in 1994 ousted the government, a French-backed Hutu regime that had carefully planned and then carried out the genocide.
Relations between France and Rwanda 's Tutsi-led government have been strained ever since.