00:00Just two months ago, Rwanda's president Paul Kagame and his Congolese counterpart Felix Chisekedi
00:06signed a peace deal to put an end to the fighting in eastern Congo.
00:10But on the ground, the conflict continues.
00:13This has most recently prompted calls in the U.S. to impose new sanctions on Rwanda,
00:18a message ill-received by the country's president.
00:21The amount of threats we come under on a daily basis,
00:25we will do this if we don't do this, we will do that if we don't do that.
00:30You know, sometimes you feel chocked by this kind of...
00:43But instead of being chocked by all of that,
00:50I will be chocked by just being defiant and telling you to go to hell.
00:55The pressure on Rwanda has been mounting in recent months
01:00over its continued support for the M23 rebels,
01:04which took large parts of eastern Congo in rapid offensives last year.
01:09Speaking at an event in Kigali on Thursday,
01:11Kagame called for more self-reliance for his nation
01:14and also criticized threats from the broader international community.
01:18These Congolese are very lucky.
01:22This is a second man who stands there and abuses people
01:28and threatens and does that.
01:30And then, in the end,
01:33this international community comes to me
01:36and says, yeah, yeah, yeah, you see, you know, you need to do this.
01:39You know what?
01:41And I tell them, don't you realize that by doing that,
01:47you are actually emboldening this person
01:49not to find a solution to their problem.
01:53Rwanda's ambassador to the U.S.
01:55recently admitted for the first time
01:57that the country was directly coordinating security
02:00with the M23 rebels.
02:02Kigali, however, continues to insist
02:04that its support for the rebels
02:05is only a measure of self-protection.
Comments