According Gérard Araud, the Balladur government would have wanted as soon as it took office to withdraw French troops from Rwanda. This is not confirmed by the documents. Indeed, on April 2, 1993,
Edouard Balladur declared: "we can put a thousand [soldiers] more". The Amaryllis evacuation operation from April 9 to 14, 1994 is not mentioned. Alain Juppé said "
what is in being perpetrated in Rwanda deserves the name of genocide" not on the 15th but
on May 16, 1994 in Brussels. He repeated it on May 18 before the National Assembly, but he did not draw the consequences, when, during Operation Turquoise, France had a United Nations mandate to use force to arrest the alleged perpetrators of the genocide.
The Quai d'Orsay note of July 7, 1994 indicates that "
the request is expressed that our forces intervene directly for the arrest and detention of the perpetrators of the massacres: this is an action which, apart from flagrant délit,
does not fall under the mandate given to us ". The error in the assertion that Balladur visited Rwanda on June 29, 1994 suggests that the author did not bother checking his archives. Gérard Araud's observation that Admiral Lanxade, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces "
could, at all times, play the president against the government and vice versa" balances his assertion that "
the general staff [was] fiercely opposed" to the intervention in Rwanda in June 1994. Writing that "
Rwanda has become the Prussia of the Great Lakes region", this diplomat reveals his deep thought, brimming with hatred towards those who put an end to the genocide of the Tutsi.
