Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
27-05-2025
KINSHASA: Officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo are optimistic they can reach a deal with Washington next month to secure US investment in critical minerals alongside support to end a Rwandan-backed rebellion in the country’s east, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Congolese minerals such as tungsten, tantalum and tin, which Kinshasa has long accused neighboring Rwanda of illegally exploiting, could be exported legitimately to Rwanda for processing under the terms of a peace deal being negotiated by the US, media reported last week.
An investment deal with the US and separate peace deal with Rwanda were possible “by the end of June”, the newspaper said, citing two people close to the negotiations but potential stumbling blocks remain substantial, the FT said.
Media could not confirm the report.
Congo’s Mines Minister Kizito Pakabomba said an agreement with the US would help “diversify our partnerships”, reducing the country’s dependence on China for the exploitation of its vast mineral riches, the FT reported.
Kinshasa views the plundering of its mineral wealth as a key driver of the conflict between its forces and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in eastern Congo that has intensified since January, accusing Kigali of smuggling tens of millions of dollars’ worth of minerals over the border each month to be sold from Rwanda.
Washington is pushing for a peace agreement between the two sides to be signed this summer, accompanied by minerals deals aimed at bringing billions of dollars of Western investment to the region, Massad Boulos, US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Africa, said earlier this month.
“Both participants have committed to work to find peaceful resolutions to the issues driving the conflict in eastern DRC, and to introduce greater transparency to natural resource supply chains. Respect for each country’s territorial integrity is at the center of the process,” a US State Department spokesperson told Reuters on Sunday.
Rwanda’s defensive measures along the border are necessary as long as threats and the cause of insecurity in the DRC persists, Yolande Makolo, a Rwandan government spokesperson said, according to the FT.
In January, when M23 rebels swept into the Congolese city of Goma this week, world powers urged them to immediately withdraw. Instead, the Rwanda-backed insurgents are intent on showing they can restore order and govern.
On Thursday, power and mobile data services, which had been down for days were back up. The border with Rwanda, a lifeline for the city, had been re-opened. M23 officials said they had trained up hundreds of administrators who were ready to deploy. “We are asking all Goma residents to go back to normal activities,” said Corneille Nangaa, head of Alliance Fleuve Congo, the political coalition backing the M23, just two days after heavy fighting subsided, leaving bodies in the streets and the city cut off from the outside world.
Nangaa also pledged to get children back in school within 48 hours and open a humanitarian corridor so people displaced by fighting could return home.
How well M23 manage to maintain order and run services in Goma, a city of 2 million people, will be key to determining if they can expand elsewhere in eastern Congo or if their reign will be short-lived as it was in 2012.
At stake is a potential return to the situation that arose in the 1990s and 2000s, when Rwanda and Uganda and their proxy forces occupied and ran Congo’s eastern borderlands, managing trade, communications and transport.
One UN official said a number of members of the RCD-Goma movement, a Rwanda-backed group dating back to the 1998-2003 war, were involved in the M23. (Int’l News Desk)
