On the first state visit by a Rwandan head of state since the genocide, President Paul Kagame emphasised his visit was aimed at building economic and commercial ties.
“By coming here, we are looking towards the future instead of the past,” he told reporters after a working lunch with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Rwanda has accused the French army of contributing to the massacre of 800,000 mainly ethnic Tutsis by the then Hutu regime and its supporters.
Diplomatic ties were broken off in 2006 after a French judge accused Kagame, then leading a Tutsi rebel group, of involvement in the shooting down of former President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane in April 1994 – the catalyst for the genocide.
Both sides have denied the charges.
France began to normalise its relations with Rwanda after Sarkozy came to power in 2007. In February 2010 the French president on a trip to Kigali said Paris had made serious errors of judgment over the massacre and wanted to ensure all those responsible for the slaughter were caught and punished.