Inquiry into genocide plane crash

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Rwanda has launched an independent inquiry into the downing of President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane in 1994, sparking the Rwandan genocide.

Justice minister Tharcise Karugarama told the BBC that a Supreme Court judge will head the commission, which will have one year to investigate.

There are conflicting theories over how, and by whom, the plane was downed.

Rwanda severed relations after a French judge implicated President Paul Kagame in the Habyarimana assassination.

At the time of the genocide, most observers believed President Habyarimana had been killed by Hutu extremists opposed to his peace deal with the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

But French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere alleged that it was the RPF leader, Paul Kagame, who ordered the attack in order to seize total power.

The judge signed international arrest warrants for nine of Mr Kagame's close aides for their alleged role in the assassination, provoking outrage in Kigali.

Last month saw a slight thaw when the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and his Rwandan counterpart Charles Murigande met for the first time since relations were severed.

Rwanda has repeatedly accused France of arming and training the Hutu extremists who perpetrated the genocide and of dragging its feet to cooperate with the investigations that followed the massacres.