They did not exchange a glance. Congolese Félix Tshisekedi and Rwandan Paul Kagame were nevertheless a few meters from each other, for the "family photo" which opened the Francophonie summit, Friday in Villers-Cotterêts north of Paris.
The heavy diplomatic and military dispute between their two countries in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), ravaged by decades of violence, remains alive, despite Paris' hopes of seeing them come closer.
The DRC, as well as the U.N. group of experts, accuse Rwanda of having deployed troops in support of the M23 ("March 23 Movement"), a predominantly Tutsi rebellion that has seized large swathes of territory in this mineral-rich region since 2021.
The idea of a Kagame-Tshisekedi meeting fizzled out. French President Emmanuel Macron, the summit's host, finally spoke separately with his two counterparts to "encourage" them to conclude a peace agreement "as soon as possible," while Angola, the mediator appointed by the African Union, has been trying for months to make progress on this sensitive issue.
And the summit almost ended in a clash. At the closing Saturday, Macron called for the "withdrawal of the M23 and Rwandan troops" from Congolese soil, as Kinshasa is demanding. Tshisekedi had slammed the door of the plenary the day before, angry at the silence of the French president on the situation in the DRC, according to a Congolese government source to AFP.
Harmonized plan
On the Angolan mediation side, discussions are running into new blockages despite the "important" compromises obtained recently with a view to a possible peace agreement, starting with the cease-fire agreement signed at the end of July, according to Rwandan and Congolese sources contacted by AFP.
Alongside ongoing political discussions, intelligence officials from both countries met in secret several times in August to establish a "harmonized plan" for ending the crisis, the sources said.
This plan, which was spread over four months, consisted for the Congolese to launch operations to "neutralize" the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), to respond to the concerns of Kigali. This rebel group formed by former senior Hutu leaders of the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, and who have since taken refuge in the DRC, constitutes a permanent threat in the eyes of Kigali.
In return, Rwanda gave the green light to "a disengagement of forces" deployed in the east of the DRC and hostile to Kinshasa.
Alas. The progress of the negotiations finally came to a halt on September 14, at the end of yet another meeting between the Rwandan and Congolese foreign ministers Olivier Nduhungirehe and Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner.
Go further
The first, questioned by AFP, accuses the DRC of having "blocked everything" over a matter of timing, "because the harmonized plan planned to launch operations to neutralize the FDLR on D+25", while the withdrawal of rebel and Rwandan "forces" was to begin five days later, on D+30.
"The plan proposed was reasonable, it was a good plan," Nduhungirehe assures.
"The principle that should have been enacted is that of the simultaneity of operations, because it is much more effective," the Congolese government source told AFP. "In any case, it is not the military and intelligence experts who ultimately decide, but the political leaders."
At the U.N. on September 25, President Tshisekedi unsurprisingly called on the international community to impose "targeted sanctions" against Rwanda, insisting that its military presence on Congolese soil is an "aggression (which) constitutes a major violation of our national sovereignty."
"Approving this plan would have been politically risky for Tshisekedi, reelected a year ago on a belligerent program towards Kagame and it could have been interpreted by public opinion as a 180-degree turnaround," explains Onesphore Sematumba, expert for the International Crisis Group (ICG).
According to him, "there will be no purely military solution to the current crisis which has caused a humanitarian catastrophe [with nearly 7 million internally displaced people], it is an illusion."
"We will have to go much further than the 'harmonized plan,'" he said, and address the issue of mineral resources, the subject of fierce competition, but also political dialogue with the myriad of armed groups present on the ground.
In the meantime, the Angolan mediator has proposed a new inter-ministerial meeting on October 12. Both parties assure AFP that they will go.
