Rwandan officials on Friday, February, 7, met with their Ugandan counterparts at the Gatuna border for a joint planning meeting ahead of the forthcoming summit between presidents Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni. The heads of state are scheduled for February 21 as both countries seek to mend broken relations, as agreed by at the recent heads of state meeting. According to available information, the preparatory meeting on the Rwandan side was led by Minister Claver Gatete, the Minister of Infrastructure while on the Ugandan side it was led by General Katumba Wamala, the Ugandan Minister for Transport. Uganda’s ambassador to Rwanda, Oliver Wonekha and the Angolan ambassador to Rwanda, Eduardo Octávio also attended the meeting. The meeting is a follow-up on a quadripartite summit, the third of its kind, which took place earlier last week between the two presidents hosted by President Lourenço of Angola. The meeting was also attended by President Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo. During the Luanda meeting last week, both Rwanda and Uganda committed to releasing nationals of each country held and lists were submitted to facilitate the objective. Whereas no Ugandan is known to be in the custody of Rwanda, Rwanda says there are hundreds of its nationals being held in Uganda without consular access or legal representation while others have since been deported after spending months in Ugandan jails, mostly ungazetted, where they have said they were tortured. Since early 2019, Rwanda issued a travel advisory to its citizens warning them against travelling to Uganda since they were not secure from there. The previous quadripartite summit set 21st February 2020 as the date for the next meeting between the presidents. The February 21 summit will aim to evaluate the progress of the agreed-upon resolutions.
