France urges Rwanda to stop supporting DR Congo rebels

France has condemned Rwanda’s alleged support for M23 rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a volatile region where the militia has seized swaths of territory in recent months.

During a visit to the DRC’s capital Kinshasa on Tuesday, French minister of state Chrysoula Zacharopoulou told reporters the M23 must lay down its arms and abandon the areas it occupies.

“Rwanda, because it must be named, must stop supporting the M23,” she said. “We must put an end to the repetition of history in this region”.

Zacharopoulou’s declaration came after France’s foreign ministry on Monday evening also called on Rwanda to cut links with the M23.

A Tutsi-led rebel group, the M23 first leapt to prominence when it captured the eastern Congolese city of Goma in 2012, before being driven out and going to ground.

But it re-emerged late last year, claiming the DRC had failed to honour a pledge to integrate its fighters into the army, among other grievances.

The M23 has since surged across North Kivu province and come within several dozen kilometres (miles) of Goma. The violence has also displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Kinshasa accuses its smaller central African neighbour Rwanda of backing the M23, which Kigali strongly denies.

However, US officials and United Nations experts agree that Rwanda supports the rebels. Belgium — the former colonial power in both the DRC and Rwanda — also recently urged Kigali to stop backing the militia.

On Tuesday, Zacharopoulou said that “the role of a friend” is not only to denounce but also to find solutions.

“The relationship that we have rebuilt with Kigali, we are putting it at the service of peace,” the minister of state said.

Relations between Paris and Kigali had long been strained due to the former’s stance during the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.

The French government at the time of the genocide had been a long-standing backer of the Hutu regime in power.

Tensions eased in recent years, however, and last year French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that France bore responsibility for having backed a genocidal regime.