Anastase Gasana

Dr. Anastase Gasana (born August 5 1950 in Gicomero, near Kigali, Rwanda) is a Rwandan Hutu political figure and diplomat.

Gasana was a university professor before entering politics. He became an advisor to President Juvenal Habyarimana. He allegedly helped to found the Interahambwe Hutu militias that committed much of the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Gasana was appointed as the foreign minister of Rwanda for the first time in 1993 and signed Rwanda's accords with Tutsi rebels in Arusha, Tanzania. After Habyarimana's death in a plane crash, Gasana left the foreign ministry. He became ambassador to the United Nations but later in 1994, after the Rwandan Patriotic Front under Paul Kagame had taken over the country following the Rwandan genocide, Gasana became foreign minister again.

He continued to be a leading member of the Rwandan government for over a decade. As foreign minister, it was left to Gasana to defend Rwanda's reaction to the genocide and its involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo civil war to the international community. He was notable for blaming many of Rwanda's problems on the United Nations, and denied that Rwanda was committing war crimes in Congo. He remained foreign minister until a February 1999 cabinet reshuffle. He then became a minister in the office of the President until 2001, when he became ambassador to the United Nations again. He left that position in 2003 and has not held any major post since then.