* Rwanda wrote to UN Security Council against supporting SADC troops in DRC
* Labelled SADC troops in the DRC a “non-neutral force”
BONGANI MALUNGA
The Southern African Development Community has not taken kindly to recent remarks by Rwanda that its accusing its troops deployed to eastern DRC of “not being a neutral force”.
The Executive Secretary of the regional bloc, Elias Magosi, expressed the disapproval when he addressed the SADC Extraordinary Organ Troika Summit in Lusaka, Zambia last week where he reaffirmed SADC’s relentless pursuit of peace and security in war-torn DRC and Mozambique.
In the DRC, the army is locked in a struggle with M23 rebels in a situation that often threatens to spread into a regional war between Rwanda and the DRC. On the other side of the sub-continent, Mozambique is fighting against Islamic rebels in the Cabo Delgado province in a war that goes back seven years.
Anxious
At the Troika summit in Lusaka, Magosi was anxious to emphasise how SADC should avoid negative external narratives that may compromise peace keeping missions.
He said the SADC Organ Troika Summit as a whole “disapproves of the contents of the correspondence from Rwanda to the United Nations and the African Union concerning support to SAMIDRC” and acknowledged the support that SAMIDRC enjoys from the African Union Commission and the UN Security Council.
Magosi was speaking in response to a letter from Rwanda to the UNSC objecting to its support for SADC troops deployed to eastern DRC.
Escalation
The letter was written by Rwanda’s foreign affairs minister Vincent Biruta to the president of UNSC, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, arguing that any decision to support SAMIDRC would be on the side of those who threaten the security of Rwanda.
“The Government of Rwanda would like to request UNSC to avert the escalation in the eastern DRC by not reconsidering the request to provide logistical and operational support which could only feed into more escalation,” the letter said in part.
Removal
Rwanda is adamant that the international community is not paying attention to what it says is the root cause of the conflict, the DRC’s alleged support of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) whose key objective is removal of Paul Kagame as president of Rwanda.