A former senior Rwandan official testified that Paris had supported the perpetrators of the genocide in order to protect the French-speaking nation from rebels backed by Uganda, an English-speaking former British colony.
Testifying before the first public hearing in a probe into alleged French complicity in the massacres, the ex-official said Paris opposed the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) of the time because of its ties to Uganda.
Jacques Bihozagara -- a founding member of the Tutsi-led RPF, which is now the country's ruling party, and later Rwanda's ambassador to France – said French policy was then driven by concerns about losing influence in Africa.
"France conducted a denigration and demonisation campaign against the RPF and its leaders," he told the panel in testimony aired live by Rwandan radio.
"They thought a francophone country was being attacked by an Anglophone country" and believed "they had to rush to the rescue," Mr Bihozagara told the panel.
He was the first of 25 witnesses due to appear at public sessions over the next week as the commission weighs whether Rwanda should sue France for genocide-related damages at the world court.
The government-appointed panel of historians, legal experts and a senior military officer in the former Rwandan army has been working since April to investigate claims of French involvement in the genocide.
France allegations
The panel is looking into claims that France trained and armed those responsible for the genocide, when some 800,000 people were slaughtered in a 100-day killing spree from April to July 1994, and helped some flee.
Kigali has repeatedly accused Paris of abetting the genocide, but France has denied any role in the massacres of mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus by Hutu extremists.
In three hours of testimony in the Kinyarwanda language, Mr Bihozagara questioned France's motive in leading a UN military and humanitarian mission known as Operation Turquoise in the last two months of the genocide.
"Operation Turquoise was aimed only at protecting genocide perpetrators, because the genocide continued even within the Turquoise zone," he said.
French soldiers were deployed to southwestern Rwanda in the operation to set up and secure a humanitarian zone, but have been accused of allowing radical Hutus to enter Tutsi camps.
Commission chairman and former Rwandan justice minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo has said the panel will finish its work within six months, having been given a six month extension in its mandate earlier this month.
While France denies the allegations, a former French soldier last year alleged that French troops had trained Rwandan militia responsible for the killings in the two years leading up to the genocide.