***French denial of a hidden agenda in its military intervention in Rwanda is a recognition of criticisms of the operation not only from developing countries but from within France Itself. Gemini News Service looks at the mixed response to Operation Turquoise.***

FRENCH television has been happ with its footage of clean-shaven, crew-cut, muscle-bound French soldiers benevolently doling out food to famished, frightened and sometimes crippled Africans.

That safely non-political, view of Paris' armed intervention in Rwanda Is welcomed by Medectns Saps Frontiers (MSF — Doctors Without Frontiers), a group of French doctors and nurses which has become famous for its rapid-response tet's-dothejoband - worry-about-polltics-later forays into the world’s war zones.

For two months before the intervention, its leaders had been lobbying a hesitant French government to despatch troops.

"France alone proposed an answer." maintains MSF chairman Philippe Biberson.

Not true. A group 14 African countries, including Zimbabwe and Ghana, had agreed to send in forces. But the West ignored African requests for weapons to enable them to do the job properly. The African offer to intervene was barely mentioned in the French media.

Nevertheless, the response to Paris' initially humanitarian and subsequently military move has been by no means unanimous here. In contrast to most TV coverage, much of the print media has been critical of Operation Turquoise.

So have a number of prominent politicians. *

"It's pure and simple colonialism," said former Gaullist prime minister and Foreign Legion officer Pierre Messmer.

"What a mistake. "It's up to the Africans to intervene themselves."

The Communist party vehemently protested against the shift from humanitarian to military intervention and even diehard conservative MPs

scowled at the government's actions.

Centrist Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a former president, is particularly uncomfortable about the idea of shooting it out with the advancing rebels. "By what right? Advancing in

the war are the Tutsis — that is to say. the victims, while some of the perpetrators of the massacre are being sheltered by us." he said.

The task of the defenders of French intervention was not made easier by the difficult questions that had to be answered. The answers only made things worse.

Why did France more in troops under its own command rather than that of the United ‘.Nations?

Because, said France's UN Ambassador, "such a force would no longer be considered neutral" — the implication being that French forces under French command in Rwanda would be deemed neutral, despite being led by a former military adviser to the assassinated Hutu President. Juvenal Habiyarimana.

Then there were the questions raised by the New York based Human Rights Watch which reminded the world of the millions of dollars worth of weapons supplied to Habiyari-mana's army by Paris. And possibly the most damaging: Colette Braeckman of Belgium's Le Soir reported that French soldiers were responsible for shooting down the plane carrying Habiyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira. President of neighbouring Burundi. the double assassination which sparked

the massacres

Such charges have not really been countered in Paris. Just as the only reaction to a human Rights Watch request to Paris to investigate Hutu killers know to be hiding in the French safe haven on Rwanda's western border was Intense irritation and sealed lips.

The reason appears to be that there are rifts within the Foreign Ministry, military and secret services over the Rwanda operation

The weekly Le Pointt claims that Socialist President Francois Mitterrand and his Gaullist Foreign and Interior Ministers. Alain Juppe and Charles Pasqua are entirely in favour of armed meddling in Africa .

Hostile to France’s "African power"' role are Prime Minister Edouard Balladur and Cooperation Minister and former top intelligence officer Michel Roussin. both Gaullists, as well as centrist defence Minister Francois Leotard.

Dissenting civil servants and senior intelligence officials have been nudged to the sidelines of policy-rpaking and told to shut up. But harsh criticism keeps propping up from unidentified official sources th reputable French newspapers.

All are aware that France became Rwanda’s first friend shortly after its independence

from Belgium s in 1962. A decade later the head of Rwanda s presidential guhrd ^tabiyarimana, surrounded by Hutu extremists, seized power with Frances blessing

A guerilla operation against Habiyarimana by the predomi nantly Tutsi Patriotic Front was defeated only by the Inter venlion of French troops

France helped boost the mainly Hutu Rwandan army’s strength from 15.000 to 45.000 with help from neighbouring Zaire. Egypt and south Africa.

And the French media has printed testimonies from former Hutu militiamen that French Instructors trained them in combat and torture techniques before they went on their recent murderous rampage. Mitterrand maintains that: "One- couldn't carry on watching the massacres take pla^e Generous geostrategists say France moved in to atone for past sins In Rwanda: unkind critics say French troops are simply trying to protect their Hutu killer friends and get them back into government — even, if necessary. a government dominated by the Tutsis and moderate Hutus of Jhe Patriotic Front.

In the process. Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko, who was also given Frances friendship soon after seizing power, has catapulted himself Into a key role in the region which has enabled him to consolidate foreign friendships — which could prove useful against his own increasingly restive population.