After fighting on opposite sides of what was dubbed Africa’s ”first world war”, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are now working to normalise their relations, officials from both countries said in Kigali on Thursday.
The declarations were made after talks between the DRC Minister for Regional Cooperation Mbusa Nyamwisi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame in the latter’s office.
”The idea is to normalise bilateral relations. We discussed a number of issues (including) the re-opening of embassies and diplomatic representations,” Kagame’s advisor on DRC, Richard Sezibera, told journalists after the meeting.
”We also discussed what steps we can take in the security field … and also in the economic field,” he added.
In 1998, Rwanda sent thousands of troops into the DRC to bolster a rebellion against then president Laurent Kabila in a war that drew in some half dozen states at its height. Rwandan forces were officially withdrawn a year ago.
Earlier this week Uganda, which also backed DRC rebels, announced it would soon restore diplomatic relations with Kinshasa.
Mbusa Nyamwisi said in Kigali that he had come to deliver a message from DRC President Joseph Kabila that Rwanda and the DRC had to ”normalise” their relations.
Questioned about reports over the past few days that Rwanda still had troops in the DRC, Sezibera said Kinshasa had levelled no such charges.
”We have not received any accusations from the DRC government about any Rwandan presence (in DRC) and I don’t know who else has the moral authority or the responsibility to accuse Rwanda”, he said.
”It’s not my role to accuse Rwanda”, Mbusa Nyamwisi told journalists, while declining to say straight out whether he had any evidence of any such Rwandan military presence in DRC.
Over the past two weeks the human rights group Amnesty International, together with other institutions and some journalists, have accused Rwanda of having either maintained troops in DRC after its official withdrawal or of having sent troops back
in afterwards.
Moreover the UN Mission in DRC, Monuc, earlier this week said it had met with ”obstruction” in its attempts to verify claims of Rwandan military presence in one region of eastern DRC.
Rwanda has denied the accusations, calling them a fabrication on the part of people intent on sabotaging reconciliation efforts.
Nyamwisi, before joining the reconciliation government set up earlier this year in Kinshasa, headed the Uganda-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement (RCD-ML) rebel group during the DRC war.
Thursday’s friendly overtures come the week after Rwanda suddenly dropped its long-held claim that Kinshasa was still supporting the armed Rwandan Hutu extremists who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The flight of these fighters across the border to eastern DRC was used by Rwanda to justify its military engagements there.
On October 22, Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Murigande returned from Kinshasa saying the new transition government — which includes a former rebel group backed by Kigali — was now serious about disarming the Interahamwe militias and soldiers of a defunct Rwandan army. – Sapa-AFP