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Rwanda reportedly said on Friday it had proof of an intended major attack by the Democratic Republic of Congo and denied it was fomenting conflict inside its neighbour’s border.
Kigali and Kinshasa blame each other for renewed instability in east Congo, where Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have seized the regional capital Goma and are advancing on more territory, with thousands dead and hundreds of thousands uprooted, Reuters reported.
“We categorically oppose the DRC’s attempts to portray Rwanda as being responsible for its instability in the eastern DRC,” Rwanda’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, James Ngango, told an emergency meeting of the Human Rights Council.
“What is clear, however, is the imminent threat the current situation poses to Rwanda. Following the fall of Goma, new evidence has come to light regarding an imminent, large-scale attack against Rwanda,” he said, adding that Kinshasa and its allies had stockpiled weapons in and around Goma airport.
It was unclear if the diplomat considered the threat to be active or neutralised by the M23 advance and he declined to comment further when approached by Reuters.
“The weapons were not … against the M23. Rather, they were pointed directly at Rwanda,” he added, saying they included rockets, kamikaze drones and heavy artillery guns.
Asked to respond to the diplomat’s remarks, Congo’s Minister of Foreign Trade Julien Paluku told Reuters: “Rwanda is building, like it always does, an empire of lies.”
Meanwhile, a military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has issued an international arrest warrant for the leader of the Congo River Alliance, which includes the M23, for war crimes and treason.
State media reported on Thursday that the warrant was issued on Tuesday against Corneille Nangaa for massacres it claimed he committed in eastern DRC’s North Kivu and, more recently, in South Kivu regions – constituting a crime under Congolese legislation, as well as international law.
The court has ordered Nangaa to be arrested wherever he may be found and brought to Congolese territory, according to a report by Aljazeera.
Violence erupted in Goma, a city of two million people in eastern DRC, two weeks ago when the M23 fighters launched a major offensive against government forces.
On Wednesday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that at least 2,800 people died in Goma due to the violence.
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