The European Union (EU), in a statement released on Saturday December 31, "strongly" urged Rwanda to "stop supporting" the M23 rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). 

The Twenty-Seven call on Rwanda to "use all means to put pressure on the M23 so that it complies with the decisions" taken by the heads of state of the community of East African States, according to this declaration by Joseph Borrell, head of EU diplomacy, following the publication of a report by UN experts on the DRC. 

In this report published in December, experts mandated by the United Nations claim to have collected "substantial evidence" demonstrating "the direct intervention of the Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) on the territory of the DRC", at least between November 2021 and October 2022. 

Rwanda is accused by Kinshasa, but also by the United States and several European countries, of supporting and fighting alongside the M23 in North Kivu, a Congolese province bordering Rwanda, where the rebellion has conquered vast territories in recent months. sections of territory.

Kigali systematically denies this accusation.  

But according to the report of the group of experts, the Rwandan army launched these military operations to "reinforce the M23" and "against the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda)", a predominantly Hutu armed group, founded by former leaders of the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. 

Presented as a threat by Kigali, the existence and violence of this militia justified past Rwandan interventions in the DRC. 

The European Union also called on the DRC to "stop and prevent any cooperation between the FARDC (Congolese army) and the armed groups, in particular the FDLR".  

Rwanda, for its part, accused the DRC, where the presidential election is scheduled for December 2023, of instrumentalizing the conflict for electoral purposes and of having "fabricated" a massacre which, according to a United Nations investigation, was committed at the end of November by the M23 and claimed the lives of at least 131 civilians in the villages of Kishishe and Bambo, according to a still provisional report.  

Diplomatic initiatives have been launched to try to resolve the crisis in eastern DRC where an East African regional force, led by Kenya, is being deployed.  

On Friday north of Goma, fighting again pitted the Congolese army, supported by self-defense groups, against the M23 rebels. 

With AFP 

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