France starts to normalize ties with Rwanda: Sarkozy

LISBON (Reuters) - France has begun to normalize its relations with Rwanda, broken off by the African country last year in a row over a French inquiry into events that triggered the 1994 Rwandan genocide, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Saturday.

"We want to turn the page, we want to look to the future," Sarkozy said after meeting his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame during an EU-Africa summit in Lisbon. Sarkozy described the meeting as "the start of a normalization" of ties.

Rwanda broke off diplomatic relations with Paris in November 2006 after a French anti-terrorist judge, Jean-Louis Bruguieres, issued a summons for Kagame to testify in a French inquiry over the assassination of his predecessor, Juvenal Habyaramana.

The shooting down of the plane carrying Habyaramana triggered the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which soldiers and militia of the Hutu ethnic group slaughtered around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

(Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry; Editing by Pascal Fletcher)