* Says “child-to-parent” relationship must end
* Rwandans have known “worse situations” than aid cuts
* Paris calls for Security Council meeting on Monday
(Adds detail on rebels, French call for Security Council
meeting)
By Duncan Miriri
NAIROBI, July 28 (Reuters) – Rwanda’s foreign minister
accused Western governments on Saturday of using aid to treat
African states like children, after four countries cut or
delayed aid to Kigali because of its policy in neighbouring
Democratic Republic of Congo.
The United States last weekend cut military aid for this
year while the Netherlands, Germany and Britain followed suit as
donors reacted to a United Nations report that accuses Rwanda of
backing rebels in the Congo.
The report, contested by Rwanda, said the country was
supporting armed groups in neighbouring eastern Congo, including
the M23 group, which has seized parts of North Kivu province in
fighting that has displaced more than 270,000 people since
April.
“This child-to-parent relationship has to end … there has
to be a minimum respect,” Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo
said in an address to the Kenyan business club Mindspeak.
“As long as countries wave cheque books over our heads, we
can never be equal.”
She added that Africans had to work hard to develop their
economies in order to stop relying on Western donors.
Rwanda, which has been working to rebuild its economy after
more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed
in a 1994 genocide, relies on donors to fund 50 percent of its
annual budget, Mushikiwabo said.
Its ties with its much larger neighbour Congo had been
thawing since 2009, following years of conflict in which Rwandan
troops crossed the border in pursuit of remnants of the Hutu
militias that carried out the genocide.
Mushikiwabo said it was too early to tell what kind of
damage the withholding of aid would do to the government’s
economic development push.
“We have been in much worse situations than dollars being
withheld from us,” she said.
Germany’s Development Minister Dirk Niebel said in a
statement his ministry had warned Rwanda four weeks ago it would
suspend aid payments due to indications of support for rebels.
“Rwanda did not use this time to rebut these serious
allegations… suspending budget aid is a clear sign to the
Rwandan government.”
CONGO “MESS”
A Reuters reporter said on Saturday that heavily armed rebel
forces had moved to Kibumba, around 30 km (20 miles) from the
North Kivu capital of Goma, whilst drunk government forces had
withdrawn their forces further south towards the city.
Yamina Benguigui, France’s minister for relations with
French-speaking countries who is in Congo, said Paris had
requested a United Nations Security Council meeting for Monday
to discuss the crisis.
“A declaration will be negotiated clearly condemning M23 and
its support,” she said.
Mushikiwabo accused the international community of using
Rwanda as a scapegoat for the chaos in eastern Congo. “Do not
draw Rwanda into this mess. It is not our business,” she said.
The U.N. report said Kigali had supplied ammunition and
communication equipment to the rebels, some of whom are
Congolese of Rwandan descent. But Mushikiwabo said the type of
ammunition alluded to in the report no longer existed in Rwanda,
under regional small arms-reduction programmes.
The radio communications gear cited also was not being used
by modern armies like Rwanda, proving they could not have
supplied it to the Congolese rebels, she added.
Details of a neutral force to eliminate armed groups from
eastern Congo, agreed on by the regional group of Great Lakes
states that includes Rwanda and Congo, would be discussed by a
meeting of the organisation’s ministers of defence and security
chiefs in Khartoum over the next three days, Mushikiwabo said.
(Additional reporting by Alexandra Hudson in Berlin; Jonny Hogg
in Kinshasa; Editing by David Lewis and Michael Roddy)
