French president Emmanuel Macron has appointed a panel of experts to investigate France's role in Rwanda's genocide 25 years ago, reports the BBC.
An estimated 800,000 Rwandans, most from the minority Tutsi community, were killed by ethnic Hutu extremists over 100 days in 1994.
Rwanda has accused France of complicity in the mass killings - a charge repeatedly denied by Paris.
The experts will now consult archives to analyse France's role.
They will have access to presidential, diplomatic, military and intelligence archives, Mr Macron's office said in a statement.
Julien Allaire of Survie, a Paris-based NGO that focuses on relations between France and Africa, told the BBC that there was already ample evidence of "France's diplomatic, military and economic support for the Rwandan government before, during and after the genocide".
In 2015, then-President François Hollande announced that the Rwanda archives would be declassified but two years later, after a researcher sought permission to study them, France's Constitutional Council ruled that they should remain secret.