President Paul Kagame last Tuesday spoke out against recent accusations that Rwanda is backing a group of Congo rebels loyal to Gen Bosco Ntaganda — who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

The president, in a two-hour press conference in Kigali, accused the international community and the United Nations of failing in their duty of pacifying the DR Congo and instead choosing to shift the blame to Rwanda.

Last month, a leaked United Nations report entitled Rwanda Should Stop Aiding War Crimes Suspect accused Rwandan authorities of secretly recruiting soldiers for Ntaganda.

According to the report, rebel soldiers who have defected told United Nations officials that they were Rwandans who had been sent across the border to fight in a mutiny in eastern Congo.

READ: Fresh suspicions over hand in DR Congo war haunt Kigali

Kagame had initially been silent on the accusations, letting Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo, who this week was in Kinshasa, do all the talking. He instead travelled to Uganda, fuelling speculation that he had gone to consult his Ugandan counterpart President Yoweri Museveni.

During the press conference, President Kagame expressed his anger and frustration that the problems of Congo, which he said had been there “even before I was born,” were being blamed on Rwanda.

The Rwandan leader also accused Congo’s President Joseph Kabila failing to contain the fragile situation in his country, and instead opting to “go to bed” with the international community in making Rwanda a scapegoat.

Reflecting the rapidly souring relations between Kigali and Kinshasa, President Kagame said that Rwanda will have no option but to withdraw from all efforts aimed at returning peace to eastern Congo, and if necessary release Gen Laurent Nkunda.

“We are coming to a point where if this nonsense continues — on one hand you want Rwanda to be helpful, on the other hand you are putting all the blame on our shoulders — we shall offload all these problems that have been put on our shoulders and throw them back at them,” a visibly angry Kagame said.

“One way of doing it is, we will reach a point of saying, ‘Take this man [Nkunda] we are holding here,’ or we tell him ‘go wherever you want to go,’” President Kagame said.

Gen Nkunda, the leader of Congo’s CNDP militia, has been under house arrest in Rwanda since 2009. His forces were reintegrated into the government army after a peace deal in 2009.

In the same year, Rwanda which played a role in the peace process, renewed diplomatic ties with Kinshasa.

However, early this year, when it appeared Kinshasa would allow Gen Ntaganda to be arrested by the ICC, an army mutiny led to the birth of yet another rebel group, the M23.

The release of Gen Nkunda would signal many things, including the possibility that he could rejoin the rebels fighting the government forces to reconstitute CNDP, along with other rebel groups, to launch another full-scale rebellion.

In the UN report, Human Rights Watch’s senior Africa researcher, Anneke Van Woudenberg, claims that Rwandan army officials have provided weapons, ammunition, and an estimated 200 to 300 recruits to support Ntaganda’s mutiny in Rutshuru territory in eastern Congo.

The recruits allegedly include civilians forcibly recruited in Musanze and Rubavu districts in Rwanda, some of them children.

The report further claims that witnesses said that some recruits were summarily executed on the orders of Ntaganda’s forces when they tried to escape.

As for Gen Ntaganda, Kagame said that the international community had approached Rwanda to help in the arrest of the warlord, but his government referred them back to Congo.

The president dismissed claims that the rebel leader was spotted in Rwanda as alleged by the Human Rights Watch. “That is rubbish — I don’t know where he is, you can go ask the Congolese government, he is not our responsibility. Go and ask those people who have him, he is not in our hands,” President Kagame said.

On whether Kigali would arrest Ntaganda if he crossed into Rwanda, President Kagame said he wondered why the same people making the accusations could not arrest him, “wherever he is.”

“They are creating a scenario and putting him on our doorstep just to cause us problems,” Kagame said, adding that he doesn’t know Ntaganda and has nothing to do with him.

“I don’t manage Congo, I don’t manage Ntaganda, I have nothing to do with him,” he said.

President Kagame spoke of “double standards” applied by the international community, saying that the “expensive presence” of the UN mission in Congo (Monusco) has not achieved anything, and that he would not “pay a dollar” for it.

“I don’t see anything I would pay for, even one dollar, while they are paid $1.2 billion every year for doing nothing and they turn around and ask Rwanda to deal with the problems,” said Kagame.

Saying that he was “going to spill secrets,” President Kagame then accused the international community of attempting to topple President Kabila prior to the elections last year, revealing that “they” consulted Rwanda on how to remove Kabila “either through election or other means.”

“At the end of the day, they can’t remove him, they can’t do anything about it, he is elected, whether they think it was a fair election or otherwise, and now some reality dawns on them and they say, ‘Maybe we have to put up with this guy because they like him,’” he said.

“They like Congo but they don’t like Congolese for sure, because if they like Congolese, we wouldn’t be having these problems of rapes, of killings every day and silence over it,” President Kagame added.

He also pointed out that while the whole world was turning a blind eye, Rwanda was one of the few countries that took a stand and said, “Let the Congolese resolve their own issues.”

The Rwandan leader also spoke out on the issue of Congolese Kinyarwanda-speaking Tutsis, pointing out that they are not the only ones fighting the government and that even removing them from Congo would not solve the deeper problem, which has to do with governance.

President Kagame pointed out that Rwanda’s interest in Congo is to continue working on the good relations and towards finding a peaceful solution to the conflict there — with Rwanda’s particular interest being the FDLR rebels.

Two weeks ago, Congolese government spokesperson Lambert Mende accused Kigali of playing a “passive role” in the process while on the other hand facilitating training of hundreds of rebels fighting the regime.

Rwanda has over the past decade been accused several times of meddling in the situation in eastern Congo.

Rwanda and Uganda have been involved in two full-scale wars inside Congo, including the one that toppled Mobutu Sese Seko.