**Rwandan President Paul Kagame has travelled to the US, ignoring a lawsuit filed there over the deaths of two African presidents in 1994.**Mr Kagame spoke at a ceremony honouring Rwandan graduates in Oklahoma City.
The widows of the then leaders of Burundi and Rwanda, whose deaths sparked the 1994 genocide, say Mr Kagame ordered their plane shot down.
Mr Kagame denies this. The lawyers who filed the lawsuit were unable to serve the legal papers during his visit.
Mr Kagame was keynote speaker at the Oklahoma Christian University ceremony on Friday.
He shook hands with the Rwandan students and other graduates, saying education would be crucial in helping his country continue to recover from genocide.
However he left before the event ended, making no public comment on the lawsuit. Witnesses said he was surrounded by security guards.
Compensation
The widows of ex-Presidents Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi do not live in the US, but filed the wrongful death lawsuit in Oklahoma City because of Mr Kagame’s ties to the university, their attorneys said.
They are seeking $350m in compensation.
A university spokesman told the Associated Press news agency that Mr Kagame had come to honour the students “and we’re not going to get involved in the politics of the country”.
In 1994 Mr Kagame was the rebel leader heading the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which ousted the genocidal regime.
The plane carrying President Habyarimana - a Hutu - and Mr Ntaryamira was shot down on 6 April 1994. The Hutu extremist government accused the RPF of being responsible.
Within hours, militias set up roadblocks and started to murder Tutsis and moderate Hutus systematically.
The RPF has always accused Hutu extremists of shooting down the plane, to provide a pretext for carrying out their genocidal plans.
Some 800,000 people were killed in 100 days before Mr Kagame’s forces ousted the Hutu government.This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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