Mitterrand hunts for a grand foreign policy: Protecting Paris' long-term interests in Africa and guilt feelings are among the motives behind sending troops into Rwanda

THE FRENCH decision to send its forces to Rwanda seems to be driven by Francois Mitterrand who is looking for a grand gesture as his 13-year presidency draws to a close, a motive which seems to have driven George Bush to send the Marines to Somalia in his last days as US President.

While Edouard Balladur, the Prime Minister, seems to have acted as a brake on the intervention and reduced its scope, Alain Juppe, the Foreign Minister, picked up the challenge and first broadcast the plan 10 days ago.

Behind the public statements proclaiming that the intervention is 'purely humanitarian', lie other motives, a response to public opinion, and protection of France's long-term interests in Africa.

Rwanda, a former Belgian colony, is surrounded on two sides by Anglophone countries, and the leadership of the rebel Rwandan Patriotc Front is English-speaking. To be seen not to help a Francophone country on the edge of the Anglophone world would be a blow to French prestige in Africa. Protecting that prestige is an obsession of a lobby of Africanists surrounding President Mitterrand.

Guilt also plays a part. France supported President Juvenal Habyarimana's one-party Hutu state for decades, maintaining that support even after Belgium became more even-handed in its dealings with the rebels and the government. Egypt, South Africa, Serbia and France have supplied weapons to Rwanda but France has been the main supplier.

According to Human Rights Watch/Africa, France supplied mortars and 105mm artillery guns to the Rwandan government as well as spare parts and technical assistance to maintain French armoured cars and helicopters in 1990 when the war against the rebels began. It also sent 680 French paratroopers to Kigali, ostensibly to protect French nationals but in fact they helped support the government. More were dispatched in 1993 and were withdrawn at the end of last year.

There are accusations that French troops helped to train some of the militias who have been involved in the massacres. Amnesty International has urged France to investigate these allegations.

Arms supplies are just one part of a broad political strategy in Africa. French influence there, backed by the presence of several thousand troops on the continent, is one of the pillars that gives France a claim to 'top-nation' status. France has maintained close ties with its former colonies, using direct military action to defend or change rulers under threat. In recent years this policy has been eroded by more pragmatic policies which have downgraded Africa.

In December, President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast, the grand old man of French- speaking Africa, died, severing a vital link between Paris and Africa. Then came the devaluation of the CFA Franc, the common currency of West and Central African Francophone states, which is backed by the French treasury and costing the French taxpayer undisclosed millions in subsidy. In January, France devalued the CFA by 50 per cent. Somehow, the currency link represented an umbilical cord of far greater significance than banknotes.

French officials began to speak of 'less personal' ties with its former colonies in Africa and said that world recession had forced Paris to take a more pragmatic look at relations with its former colonies. It is words like these which are poison in the President's ear. Without a grand foreign policy his role is diminished and without Africa there is no grand foreign policy. Rescuing Rwanda is a gamble which is about more than saving African lives.