Moves to end fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that are essential to United States (US) President Donald Trump’s plans for a mining bonanza in the region are meant to get under way by Sunday
The developments come as the future of a small rebel group has emerged as one of the major obstacles.
A US-brokered peace agreement signed last month by the DRC and Rwandan foreign ministers was designed to halt violence that escalated this year with a lightning advance in DRC by M23 rebels.
Rwanda denies allegations from the United Nations and Western governments that it is fighting alongside the M23 rebels to gain access to Congo’s minerals. Rwanda says its troops are there to tackle what it describes as an existential threat from thousands of Rwandan Hutu rebels known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
Security experts and diplomats say the FDLR, which includes remnants of Rwanda’s former army and militias that carried out the 1994 Rwandan genocide, boasts only a few hundred combatants and is not a significant battlefield force.
However, the peace agreement explicitly requires the DRC to “neutralise” the FDLR as Rwanda withdraws from Congolese territory, underscoring the group’s importance to the fate of Trump’s diplomacy.
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