President Paul Kagame on Wednesday met French President Emmanuel Macron alongside Congolese President (DRC) Félix Tshisekedi to discuss solutions of the security situation in eastern DR Congo. The meeting occured Wednesday at the sidelines of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. Earlier the same day, President Kagame had stressed that fixing the security crisis in the DR Congo would require tangible actions that are result oriented. “In the eastern DR Congo, recent setbacks have served to highlight that the security situation is fundamentally no different than it was 20 years ago, when the largest and most expensive United Nations peacekeeping mission was first deployed. This has exposed neighbouring states, notably Rwanda, to cross-border attacks that are entirely preventable,” Kagame said as he addressed the 77th edition of the UN General Assembly. The United Nations maintains the largest peacekeeping mission in DR Congo that has been running of an annual budget of over US$1 billion for over 20 years now and has since failed to, among others, restore normalcy to eastern DR Congo. Kagame's remarks followed Tshisekedi's who accused Rwanda of supporting M23 rebel group claiming that his efforts to reunite the country and pursue peaceful settlements have been dragged by what he called continual external interference. However, Rwanda has always maintained that M23 is a Congolese problem that should be settled internally instead of blaming Rwanda. Instead, the Congolese government has been accussed of fighting alongside Rwandan militia groups, most notably FDLR, a fact that has been confirmed by the UN.
