Rwanda president urges self-reliance as calls for US sanctions mount

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NAIROBI — Rwandan President Paul Kagame urged his country to be more self-reliant on Thursday, as calls mount in the United States to impose more sanctions over its involvement in DR Congo.

The Great Lakes nation has come under increasing international pressure over its support for the M23 armed group, which last year captured vast swathes of the neighbouring eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

A peace deal between Rwanda and the DRC, brokered by US President Donald Trump, was signed in Washington late last year, but only days later, the M23 seized another major city, Uvira.

There was bipartisan support at a US House of Foreign Affairs subcommittee on January 22 for more sanctions on Rwanda.

Speaking at an event in the Rwandan capital Kigali on Thursday, Kagame appeared to respond with an insistence on the country's autonomy.

We have "committed ourselves to be self-reliant... so that our existence would not depend on luck, or on the goodwill of others who might choose to help us today and withdraw tomorrow", said Kagame, who often speaks in a very roundabout manner.

"Self-reliance, therefore, is our main priority," he said, in a clip shared on the official presidency's X account.

Rwanda insists it is only involved in the eastern DRC to help protect against an enemy militia formed from the remnants of those who committed the Rwandan genocide in 1994, denying direct military involvement despite considerable evidence from United Nations observers and others.

Kagame appeared to tacitly admit to a Rwandan presence in the conflict-wracked DRC.

"When they ask you if you are in the Congo, either you say 'no', and the question of defensive measures we took are... seen as if they are not there.

"And if you say 'yes', that becomes the only problem in the world to deal with," Kagame said.

Rwanda's ambassador to the US did, for the first time, admit to a direct "security coordination" with the M23 and its political arm, the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC), at the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing on January 22.

"Rwanda does engage in security coordination with AFC/M23. I state this clearly to build trust through transparency," Mathilde Mukantabana said.

She said this was "to prevent another genocidal cross-border insurgency, like in the late 1990s, that could threaten Rwanda's very existence".