French President Nicolas Sarkozy was due in Rwanda Thursday to repair relations damaged over the 1994 genocide, following a surprise visit to Mali where he met a freed French hostage, according to dpa. Al-Qaeda's north African network released Pierre Camatte, 61, on Tuesday after Mali acceded to the group's demand to free four Islamists. Sarkozy, who detoured to Mali after a visit to Gabon, thanked the West African nation's president for helping to free Camatte and vowed to help the nation fight al-Qaeda in the region. However, the prisoner swap angered neighbouring Algeria and Mauritania, which are also struggling with al-Qaeda-linked militancy. The two nations withdrew their ambassadors to Bamako, saying Mali gave into the terrorists far too easily. Analysts have warned that militant Islamism is on the rise in the arid Sahel region that cuts across Mali and much of north Africa. The French president's trip also takes place against a background of France's waning influence in its former colonies. Since the mid-1990s, anti-French feeling has grown in the Francophone countries of Africa, with many blaming their former colonial rulers for their present ills. On Wednesday in the Gabonese capital of Libreville, President Ali Bongo told Sarkozy that "the politics of patronage, networks and lessons is outdated." Sarkozy's visit to Rwanda makes him the first French president to visit the central African nation since the genocide, during which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered in a 100-day period. The two nations cut diplomatic ties in 2006 when a French judge accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame - a former rebel leader - and his aides of sparking the massacre by shooting down the plane of then-president Juvenal Habyarimana. Rwanda has accused France of training and arming Hutu militia who carried out the violence. The countries renewed diplomatic ties in November, although relations are still strained. The former Belgian colony has moved toward the anglophone world by joining two English-speaking blocs and changing its official language in schools from French to English. Kagame is expected to ask Sarkozy to arrest genocide suspects taking refuge on French soil.
