The move by Tanzania to rally international support for a negotiated settlement to a 20-year-old conflict between the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the Rwanda government is likely to strain further the relations between the two countries.

Kigali views the growing efforts to gather regional and international momentum to push Rwanda into talks with the rebels as an attempt to sanitise the FDLR, who are accused of committing atrocities in the 1994 genocide.

Last week, Tanzania Foreign Minister Bernard Membe told a media briefing after a meeting with top diplomats accredited to the country in Dar es Salaam that the Southern African Development Community wants the international community to push Rwanda to accept the new FDLR position of wanting to leave the camps and return home peacefully.

The fighters, whose leadership is composed of people alleged to have led the genocide, want to come home on negotiated terms, a demand that has been supported by Tanzania, which contributed to the UN intervention force meant to clear negative forces in the eastern DRC.

Rwanda has insisted it will never negotiate with a group guilty of genocide that moreover harbours the ideology of Hutu supremacy over any other ethnic grouping in the country.

Mr Membe said at the briefing that he was echoing a SADC position that was informed by FDLR’s formal letter asking for peaceful engagement and subsequent return home.

“But in this entire process, we have assured the government of Rwanda that they can investigate and try in courts of law those FDLR members they suspect of taking part in the 1994 genocide,” he said.

READ: Confusion clouds reports of FDLR ‘surrender’

A statement issued by the Tanzanian Foreign Affairs Ministry says that FDLR, which described itself as “a politico-military organisation whose combatants are exclusively freedom fighters originally from Rwanda settled in DRC,” wrote an appeal letter to the SADC Secretariat expressing their readiness to surrender and hand over their weapons to African relevant authorities.

“The letter also requested assistance from the SADC to oversee the process of Disarm, Demobilise, Repatriate, Resettle and Re-integrate
(DDRRR) in accordance to the directives of other neighbouring countries including Tanzania,” the statement adds.

According to the ministry, the FDLR request was accepted by SADC member states who welcomed the voluntary surrender and adherence to the DDRRR process.

“They, however, strongly suggested other stakeholders such as AU, UN and ICGLR oversee the process while Rwanda and DRC were urged to take part in the process,” it says.

Kigali is yet to reveal its position on the SADC/ICGLR resolutions but according to sources, Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos this week sent his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame a message through his foreign minister mainly containing the resolutions of the meeting in Angola.

The visit by Angolan Foreign Minister Georges Rebelo Chikoti was not publicised but according to sources, the message from President Dos Santos concerned matters of peace and security in the region.

Rwanda has also not revealed its position in regard to the six-month grace period given to FDLR to surrender. However, Kigali’s representatives at the meeting argued that three months would be enough, a sign that Rwanda is not fully against the disarmament of the group.

Both Rwanda and DRC have been asked to co-operate in an “historic peace pact.” Angola, which is the current chair of ICGLR, argued that the six-month surrender process be reviewed by the third month to gauge progress.

READ: Fingers point at FDLR as mysterious fires gut Rwanda prisons

A senior Rwandan academic, speaking anonymously, told this newspaper that should Kigali continue to be defiant it could risk being branded anti-peace, worsen its already bruised relations with key allies in the West. But he warned of a legal dilemma and said a bad precedent could arise out of the engagement.

“But this would not be the first time Kigali would be talking FDLR members... That is how Gen Paul Rwarakabije and others joined government. The only difference is that this time round the talks will be between government and an entity,” he added.

Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo, who doubles as the government spokesperson, did not respond to our inquiries but her counterpart at the Justice Ministry, Johnston Busingye, ruled out the possibility of the government engaging FDLR in peace talks.

“Well, I am not the government spokesperson and hope you will refer to Foreign Affairs... negotiations should have a basis and a cause. We have seen negotiations involving Renamo and Unita but we have not seen negotiations between Al Shabaab and Kenya or between LRA rebel leader Joseph Kony and Uganda,” Mr Busingye notes.

However, the South African High Commissioner to Kigali told The EastAfrican that pushing Rwanda to dialogue with FDLR is not provided for in the Addis Ababa peace framework, which forms the basis upon which his country contributed to UN intervention force that dealt a decisive defeat to the M23 rebels.