swift action, the survival of an entire country was at stake and the stability of a region seriously compromised." In May 2006, the Paris Court of Appeal accepted six courtsuits deposed by victims of the genocide to magistrate Brigitte Reynaud. The charges raised against the French army during Operation Turquoise from June to August 1994 are of "complicity of genocide and/or complicity of crimes against humanity." The victims allege that French soldiers engaged in Operation Turquoise did nothing to stop the massacres and allowed Interahamwe militias to escape the country in the aftermath. The former Rwandan ambassador to France and co-founder of the RPF Jacques Bihozagara testified, "Operation Turquoise was aimed only at protecting genocide perpetrators, because the genocide continued even within the Turquoise zone." France has always denied any role in the killing. UNAMIR Force Commander Dallaire had also opposed the deployment, having sent extensive communication back to U.N. Headquarters that the placement of two U.N.-authorised commands with different mandates and command structures into the same country was problematic. Dallaire was also a strong proponent of strengthening UNAMIR and transitioning it to a Chapter VII mandate, rather than introducing a new organisation. Concern over conflicting mandates led to five countries on the UNSC to abstain in the vote approving the force. The UN-sponsored "Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the UN during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda" found it "unfortunate that the resources committed by France and other countries to Operation Turquoise could not instead have been put at the disposal of UNAMIR II." On 21 June, Dallaire replaced 42 UNAMIR peacekeepers from Francophone Congo, Senegal and Togo with UN staff from Kenya after the negative reaction of the RPF to Opération Turquoise. Over the two months of the mandate, there were confrontations, and risk of confrontations, between RPF and French-led units around the zone, during which UNAMIR was asked to convey messages between the two. The UN independent inquiry drily noted that this was "a role which must be considered awkward to say the least." Notes on the text References External links Human Rights Watch "Leave None to Tell the Story" Rwandan genocide Military operations involving France 1994 in Rwanda