In spite of furious denials from Kigali, President Paul Kagame’s dash to Kampala last week underscores the importance Rwanda attaches to accusations from the Democratic Republic of Congo that it is “recruiting and resupplying rebels” of Gen Bosco Ntaganda.

It is also a testament to the responsiveness of structures — in this case the six-year-old International Conference on the Great Lakes Region — governments in the region have set up to respond to peace-threatening scenarios. This is important to understand why Rwanda and DRC haven’t openly fallen out, say, by freezing diplomatic relations, as would have been the case not long ago.

According to officials at ICGLR’s secretariat in Bujumbura, Kagame’s three-hour visit with President Yoweri Museveni was intended to engage the current chairperson of the ICGLR to broker a meeting among the three countries – Rwanda, Uganda and DRC – to ease the growing acrimony.

(Read: Fresh suspicions over hand in DR Congo war haunt Kigali)

The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the AU Heads of State Summit in Addis Ababa in July.

Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo reacted angrily, asking why the DRC had chosen to make its accusations public in blatant disregard to the joint verification taskforce the two countries were due to sign into place to clarify the allegations that she called “a big lie.”

Yet Brig Frank Mugambage, Rwanda’s ambassador to Uganda, and Tamale Mirundi, Museveni’s press secretary, both insisted Kagame’s flying visit — the previous ones in recent months were elaborately planned — was in the normal way of things between two heads of state.

“I don’t want to speculate about a meeting that was attended by only two people,” Mr Tamale said.

ICGLR officials say the three-nation meeting that Kagame was in Kampala to broker will most probably take place on the side lines of the African Union Summit due in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 9.

The AU moved the summit from Blantyre, Malawi, after President Joyce Banda vowed to arrest Sudan President Omar al Bashir if he attended the summit.

Kagame’s visit was preceded by DRC Foreign Affairs Minister Rymond Tshibonda, who was in Kampala for a few hours on June 10 and met President Museveni and senior officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

According to the DRC embassy in Kampala, Mr Tshibonda was in Uganda’s capital to request a meeting to review the tripartite agreements involving DRC, Uganda, and Rwanda in respect to conflict resolution along these countries’ borders.