Regional political leaders have recommended that diplomatic relations between their countries be revived as soon as possible. This was reached during a recent Tripartite Plus Joint Commission (TPJC) in the Burundian capital Bujumbura last week. The Minister of Foreign Affairs Rosemary Museminali led the Rwandan delegation. “The meeting re-affirmed the commitment to establishment of full diplomatic relations as soon as possible as previously decided in September 2007,’ reads the communiqué released on March 28. Currently Rwanda does not have an embassy with the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the four countries making up the commission. Burundi and Uganda are the other two members who make up the TPJC. Late last year, Dr Charles Murigande, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, and now Minister for Cabinet Affairs, had said that Rwanda could re-open her embassy in Kinshasa by September this year. The meeting also directed Chiefs of Defence Staff to meet again and review the ongoing process by reviewing the selected scenarios for a possible military action against negative forces. The scenarios adopted by military chiefs last year in an effort to seek a solution to negative forces in the DRC include individual countries entering DRC in pursuit of negative forces destabilising their respective countries and another one suggesting that TPJC could carry out a joint military operation against the negative forces. The other scenario is using diplomatic channels through broader platforms such as the African Union. The same platform last year declared the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a group of insurgents responsible for the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, as a negative force. Most of the negative forces were found to be living in the DRC and the ministers recommended that the vast central African state continues to confront the targeted groups. ‘Member States expressed their common interest in ending any restrictions that impede the Congolese Government’s sovereign right to obtain military capacity to confront the negative forces,” according to the communiqué. During an agreement signed in November last year in the Kenyan capital Nairobi between the Governments of Rwanda and DRC, the former promised to rout the genocidal militia by military force and according to the statement, the offensive was supposed to begin this month (which ends today).Ends
