Hearing told French had no part in Rwandan massacres

The man known throughout Africa as "Papa m'a dit" - "Daddy told me" - arrived half an hour late to testify before the French parliamentary committee on Rwanda. Mr Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of the late French president and his father's adviser on African affairs from 1986 until 1992, looked overweight and ill at ease in his bright yellow shirt.

He was short of breath and his hands trembled as he launched into his e defence of French policy in the central African country where 800,000 people were murdered in 1994.

"I would like to thank you for the opportunity given to me to deny the deceitful, slanderous allegations made about me in the media for many years," Mr Mitterrand began. "The orchestrated repetition of these counter-truths has polluted a healthy understanding of French policy in Rwanda."

His "African cell" - a term he rejected - was not, repeat not, in charge of African policy. "No, and I repeat no, contrary to what has been proclaimed everywhere, I did not know the son of [the late Rwandan] President [Juvenal] Habyarimana."

Mr Mitterrand is widely reported to have been a close friend of Habyarimana's son, and allegedly established the "Noroit" military aid programme in 1990 after receiving a desperate telephone call from him.

Mr Mitterrand need not have worried. The French parliamentarians treated him with kid gloves. His version of France's entanglement in Rwanda during the early 1990s - when military aid to the Hutu government increased nearly eight-fold to £6.5 million a year - was at odds with investigations by France's two principal newspapers, Le Figaro and Le Monde.

According to Mr Mitterrand, his father was caught in spiralling military commitments to President Habyarimana out of a desire to promote democracy and human rights and weaken more extreme Hutus. "I never heard him say Rwanda should be treated any differently from any other country," Mr Mitterrand said.

Evidence emerged earlier this year that Paris continued to deliver weapons to the Hutu regime for at least three months after the genocide against the Tutsis began in April 1994. President Mitt errand, obsessed with countering US influence in the region and seeing English-speaking Uganda and its Tutsi allies in the Rwandan Patriotic Front as a tool of Washington, persisted in supporting the French-speaking Hutus long after it was morally acceptable to do so.

These revelations led to public pressure for a full investigation into France's role in Rwanda in 1994. Yet critics regret that the government opted for a parliamentary "mission d'information" - a study group - rather than a full-blown commission of inquiry. Even this step was revolutionary for the National Assembly, which has never before held hearings on the government's role in a foreign policy question.

In January 1994, the Canadian Gen Romeo Dallaire, then commander of UN forces in Rwanda, reported that a faction of the government and the Hutu militias were planning the extermination of the Tutsis. Gen Dallaire has testified under oath that he transmitted the report to the French ambassador in Kigali.

Yet at the same time, Gen Jean-Pierre Huchon, in charge of the French military mission in Rwanda, requested an increase in military aid. The parliamentary committee has not asked to interview Gen Huchon.

On Tuesday, former ministers also expressed indignation at allegations of French errors in Rwanda.