PARIS - The French are back. If there was one clear message from the Franco-African summit in Paris last week, it was that France wants to renew ties with the world’s poorest continent and extend its influence beyond its old colonial backyard in west and central Africa. After taking a back seat since a controversial intervention that failed to halt Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, and may have helped many of those responsible to escape, President Jacques Chirac said war-torn Africa is again at the heart of French policy. "Some of you have had the impression that France was tending to distance...