{"id":1265739,"date":"2022-12-15T18:59:32","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T18:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/12\/15\/rwanda-leader-paul-kagame-says-dr-congo-bloodshed-not-his-problem\/"},"modified":"2022-12-15T18:59:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T18:59:32","slug":"rwanda-leader-paul-kagame-says-dr-congo-bloodshed-not-his-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/12\/15\/rwanda-leader-paul-kagame-says-dr-congo-bloodshed-not-his-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Rwanda leader Paul Kagame says DR Congo bloodshed not his problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Wednesday shrugged off a soaring death toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s east, distancing his nation from mounting bloodshed on Rwanda\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem was not created by Rwanda, and it is not Rwanda\u2019s problem. It is Congo\u2019s problem,\u201d Kagame told an audience off-site from the US-Africa Summit in Washington.<\/p>\n

A preliminary investigation by the UN mission in DR Congo found that 131 men, women and children were shot dead or hacked to death late last month as part of reprisals against the civilian population by M23 rebels.<\/p>\n

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The insurgency is widely believed to be armed and supported by Rwanda, but Kagame disavowed any link to the group\u2019s actions: \u201cI cannot be responsible for \u2026 Congolese of Rwandan descent in Congo who are being denied their rights as citizens,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Fighting in the eastern North Kivu region has aggravated already tense relations between DR Congo and Rwanda. Kinshasa expelled the Rwandan ambassador on October 29.<\/p>\n

DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi said on Tuesday in a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that his country was victim of an \u201caggression which is hidden, but it\u2019s from Rwanda, and this has been destabilising.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UN\u2019s top representative for the conflict told the Security Council last week the M23 armed group is to blame for a security situation, beginning October 20, that \u201chas deteriorated dramatically\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAn estimated additional 370\u00a0000 people have been uprooted and forced from their homes in the latest round of hostilities involving the M23,\u201d Bintou Keita said.<\/p>\n

Armed M23 fighters have advanced toward Goma, a city of some 1\u00a0million people that is the headquarters of UN humanitarian operations in eastern DR Congo, she said.<\/p>\n

Kagame said he did not yet know whether he would meet with US President Joe Biden during the summit.<\/p>\n

But asked what he would tell Biden if a one-on-one meeting were arranged, Kagame said: \u201cAfrica should not be ignored. Africa should not just be seen as a place with problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kagame acknowledged that both China and the US jostle to gain influence in Africa, but his and other African nations will seek to avoid \u201cchoosing between the US and China.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe resist being drawn to these big power plays,\u201d Kagame said.<\/p>\n

He dismissed Western critics who charge China with \u201cdebt-trap diplomacy,\u201d lending money to countries that it knows cannot repay in order to gain political leverage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should blame it on both sides,\u201d Kagame said, noting that both debtor and creditor nations face exposure.<\/p>\n

AFP<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Wednesday shrugged off a soaring death toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s east, distancing his nation from mounting bloodshed on Rwanda\u2019s doorstep. \u201cThe problem was not created by Rwanda, and it is not Rwanda\u2019s problem. It is Congo\u2019s problem,\u201d Kagame told an audience off-site from the US-Africa Summit in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1265739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1265739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1265739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1265739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1265739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}