KINSHASA

The Democratic Republic of Congo President, Mr Joseph Kabila, has told Rwanda to stop being the “bad boy” destabilising neighbours in the region.

At a press briefing this week, President Kabila also challenged Uganda to be “forthcoming” with information on its alleged political support for the M23 rebel group instead of dismissing a leaked second version of a report prepared by the UN group of Experts implicating it as “rubbish”.

Responding publicly for the first time to the UN findings, which implicate the two neighbouring countries in aiding the rebellion in North Kivu Province, Mr Kabila said the allegations captured the “truth about what is happening or has been happening in the last eight months with disastrous consequences on the local population”.

The UN report incriminates Rwandan military generals in actively directing the M23 rebellion which erupted in April, this year, and names Uganda to be facilitating the belligerent forces politically. Both countries deny the claims about the armed revolt that has claimed hundreds of lives, displaced thousands either internally or as refugees in Uganda.

Asked about his country’s failed attempt to block Rwanda’s election last week as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, President Kabila said Rwanda should now abandon “this tendency of being the bad boy in the region and try to make peace a reality with neighbours and along common borders”.

“Our position was, and still is, that with the current situation [in eastern DRC]; you can’t have a Rwanda participating in the deliberations of the UN Security Council and directly or indirectly directing no peace in a neighbouring country,” he said.

The President made the comments on Monday during a press conference at Palais De La Nation with a group of selected Ugandan journalists. He said he invited the media to Kinshasa because he never had an opportunity to address them during visits to Kampala.

According to him, the media portrayed the DRC negatively by reporting “lots of lies; lots of fiery tales”, which has undermined tourism and foreign investment in the naturally-endowed country.

Foriegn Affairs state minister Okello-Oryem last week said Uganda, as chair of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, contacted M23 officials to make peace as mandated by the regional bloc, and branded the UN allegations are “rubbish”.

Both Kampala and Kigali have blamed the fighting in DRC on the country’s unresolved internal political and development questions, and accused Kinshasa of playing victim of foreign aggression to deflect attention from the Kabila government’s failings at home.

In Kinshasa, President Kabila said he believed minister Okello-Oryem’s denial was for the convenience of the press and he will soon raise the matter afresh with Kampala at the “highest level”. Some individuals and not states, the President noted, profiteer from the “mayhem” in North Kivu province. He named no names.

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