DR Congo President Joseph Kabila has warned that he was keeping the military option on the table as a possible solution to the simmering insurrection in the eastern part of the country.
Mr Kabila, speaking to selected Ugandan journalists in Kinshasa for the first time since he became President in 2001, supported the proposed 4,000 strong neutral force.
“There is a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution and a military option will still be on the table,” he said.
The President said that his country initially proposed a neutral force to give assurances to authorities in Rwanda and DR Congo that no dissident elements from either country would be allowed to destabilise the other.
In a wide-ranging interview at his Palais De Le Nation on Monday, President Kabila raised concern about what he called Uganda’s inadequate response to allegations of its support to M23 rebel group.
He described Rwanda as the region’s “bad boy”.
Meanwhile, Rwanda’s envoy to Kampala Frank Mugambagye has accused President Kabila of exhibiting double standards.
Responding to President Kabila’s criticism of Rwanda as the “bad boy” in the region, Mr Mugambagye told the Daily Monitor in a telephone interview on Monday that the DR Congo leader was unclear.
Restore order
Mr Mugambagye said as a member of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), the DR Congo “knows that ICGLR member-countries are looking for a solution to the conflict”. “We have made our position very clear. They are baseless (the accusations) and it is surprising that people can continue to use these claims,” he said.
Responding to DR Congo allegations that Uganda was aiding M23, the minister in-charge of International Affairs, Mr Henry Okello Oryem, re-affirmed that Kampala could not insert itself back in the Congo conflict because the last time the country intervened to help to restore order, it was instead implicated in allegations of plundering and looting.
Mr Oryem said he was confident that the ongoing engagement between the M23 rebels and the authorities in Kinshasa would yield stability and peace in eastern Congo.
“We are confident as Uganda we are not involved and to the contrary, the representatives of M23 were invited to Uganda by President (Yoweri) Museveni under his chairmanship of ICGLR with the representatives of Kinshasa,” Mr Oryem said.
He added: “They were here; they have started engaging each other. We learnt our lesson the last time we were in Congo.”
Meanwhile, President Museveni at the weekend received a special envoy of President Kabila at his country home in Rwakitura in western Uganda.
According to a State House statement, President Museveni and Mr Raymond Tshibanda, who is also the DR Congo’s minister of Foreign Affairs, International and Regional Cooperation and Francophony “delved into matters pertaining to their countries’ relations”.
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