President Paul Kagame said Rwanda was ready for “confrontation” as he rejected criticism over his backing for M23 rebels who were pushing south on Thursday in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after capturing the major city of Goma.
M23 rebels, with support from Rwandan troops, marched into Goma this week and are now advancing toward Bukavu, capital of neighboring South Kivu province, in the biggest escalation since 2012 of a decades-old conflict.
Rwanda is facing an international backlash over its actions in eastern Congo, where it has repeatedly intervened either directly or through allied militias over the past 30 years in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.
But the chorus of condemnation, which has included Germany canceling aid talks with Rwanda and Britain threatening to withhold $40 million of annual bilateral assistance, was having no apparent effect on the ground.
After seizing Goma, a lakeside city of nearly 2 million and a major hub for displaced people and aid groups, M23 fighters were advancing south from the town of Minova, along the western side of Lake Kivu.
They tried to take the town of Nyabibwe, about 50 km north of Bukavu, on Wednesday but were pushed back by Congolese forces, a local resident told Reuters by phone.
A civil society source in Bukavu, who has contacts around the region, said clashes were ongoing on Thursday morning in a location known as Kahalala, about 20 km away from Nyabibwe.
“The Congolese army seems to be putting up fierce resistance there,” the source said.
In the latest diplomatic initiative, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot arrived on Thursday in Congo’s capital Kinshasa, more than 1,600 km west of Goma. He was due to meet President Felix Tshisekedi, the Congolese presidency said.
Barrot’s visit comes two days after Congolese protesters in Kinshasa attacked the French embassy and several other foreign missions over their perceived support for Rwanda.
Any successful push south by M23 would see them control territory previous rebellions have not taken since the end of two major wars that ran from 1996 to 2003, and magnify the risk of an all-out conflict that draws in regional countries.
Troops from neighboring Burundi, which has had hostile relations with Rwanda, support Congolese troops in South Kivu. A spokesperson for Burundi’s military declined to comment on the current situation in Congo.
In Goma itself, where M23 say they plan to administer the city and appear to be settling in for a lengthy period of control, the border with Rwanda, which is close to the city center, was re-opened under M23 control, its spokesperson said.
In photos: Conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo
Kagame accuses South Africa
Kagame responded angrily on X to a post by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, 13 of whose soldiers have been killed in eastern Congo since last week. Ramaphosa attributed the fighting to an escalation by the M23 and the Rwandan army.
Kagame accused South African forces of working alongside a militia in Congo with ties to perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and “threatening to take the war to Rwanda itself.”
“If South Africa wants to contribute to peaceful solutions, that is well and good, but South Africa is in no position to take on the role of a peacemaker or mediator,” Kagame wrote.
“And if South Africa prefers confrontation, Rwanda will deal with the matter in that context any day.”
Since the fall of Goma, Rwanda has also reacted angrily to calls for restraint from Western nations, accusing its critics of “victim-blaming” and turning a blind eye to what it says is Congo’s complicity in the slaughter of Tutsis.
Congo rejects Rwanda’s accusations, saying Kigali’s true motive for involvement in its eastern provinces is to use its proxy militias to control lucrative mineral mines. U.N. experts have documented the export of large quantities of looted Congolese minerals via Rwanda.
M23 is the latest ethnic Tutsi-led insurgency backed by Rwanda to fight in Congo since the 1994 genocide, when extremist Hutus killed about a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and were then toppled by Tutsi forces led by Kagame, who has been Rwanda’s president ever since.
About a million Hutus, some refugees and some genocide perpetrators, fled into eastern Congo in the aftermath of the genocide, and Rwanda accuses Congo of harboring Hutu-led militias bent on killing Tutsis and threatening Rwanda itself.
The eight-member East African Community, to which Rwanda and Congo both belong, held a virtual summit late on Wednesday to discuss the crisis. The final communique largely embraced Rwanda’s position.
It called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict through direct talks between Congo and armed groups. Congo rejects direct negotiations with the M23, which it considers a terrorist group.
The EAC also recommended a joint summit to discuss the crisis with the Southern African Development Community.
SADC member Angola, which has led the most recent efforts to broker a peace deal but is also a firm ally of Congo, called on Rwanda to withdraw its forces shortly after hosting Tshisekedi for talks in Luanda on Wednesday.
