Author: Daphne Psaledakis, Sonia Rolley and Ange Kasongo
Washington/Paris/Kinshasa (Reuters) -Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Kongo signed a peace agreement mediated by the US on Friday and gained hopes for the end of fighting, which this year killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands of others.
This agreement means a breakthrough in interviews organized by US President Donald Trump, which is also aimed at attracting billions of dollars of Western investment in the region rich in tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper, lithium and other minerals.
At the ceremony with US Foreign Minister Marco Rubio at the Foreign Ministry, the ministers of two countries signed an agreement that committed themselves to carry out an agreement 2024, which would see that Rwandan troops would withdraw from the Eastern Congo to 90 days, according to the version dedicated to technical teams last week and seen Reuters.
Kinshasa and Kigali will also introduce a regional framework for economic integration within 90 days, the agreement said.
“For many years, it has been one of the worst, one of the worst wars ever seen. And I accidentally had someone to solve it,” Trump said on Friday before two parties signing an agreement in Washington.
“For the United States, we get many mineral rights from Congo. They are so honored that they are here. They never thought they would come.”
Trump was supposed to meet foreign ministers in an oval office later on Friday.
According to analysts and diplomats, Rwanda sent at least 7,000 soldiers to the border to support the M23 rebels, who at the beginning of this year confiscated the two largest cities of the Eastern Congo and the lucrative mining areas.
The profits of this year M23, the last cycle in the decade of an old conflict with the roots in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, were worried about the wider war drawing in the neighbors of Congo.
Rwanda Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe called the agreement as a turning point. Foreign Minister Congo Therese Kayikwamba Wagner said that the agreements must be released.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond immediately to the request for commentary on the initialized version of the agreement.
Massad Boulos, the main advisor to Trump for Africa, told Reuters in May that Washington wanted the peace agreements and the accompanying agreements of the minerals to be signed this summer.
However, the agreement signed on Friday gives Congo and Rwanda three months to start the framework “to expand foreign trade and investment derived from regional critical supplier chains of minerals”, according to the initial version Reuters saw.
The source, which is familiar with this matter on Friday, told Reuters on Friday that another agreement on the framework will be signed by the heads of the state at a separate White House event at an unspecified time.
There is an understanding that progress in ongoing interviews in Doha – a separate but parallel mediation effort with delegations of the Congolese Government and M23 – is necessary before signing the economic framework, the source said.
According to the initialized version, the agreement was signed on Friday to vote “full support” for interviews with the hosted Qatar.
It is also said that Congo and Rwanda will create a common mechanism for security coordination within 30 days and introduce a plan agreed last year to track and verify the withdrawal of Rwandan soldiers within three months.
The Congolese military operations focused on the democratic forces for the liberation of Rwanda, the Congo Armed Group, which includes the remains of Rwand’s former army and militias that made the 1994 genocide, to close within the same time frame.
Reuters reported on Thursday that the Congolese negotiators dropped the earlier request that Rwandan troops would immediately leave the Eastern Congo and prepare the way for the Friday signature ceremony.
Congo, UN and Western forces say Rwanda supports M23 by sending soldiers and weapons.
Rwanda has long denied the help of M23, saying that her forces are acting in self -defense against the Congo Army and the ethnic hutum of militicists associated with Rwandan genocide of 1994.
“This is the best chance we have at the moment in the peace process, despite all challenges and shortcomings,” said Jason Stearns, a political scientist at Simon Fraser University, specializing in the African African area of the Great Lakes.
Similar formulas were before attempts, he added, and “will be on the US because they are the godfather of this agreement to make sure both sides adhere to the conditions.”
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(Tagstotranslate) Rwanda
