Angola’s President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço will participate in quadripartite Heads of State Summit as an honest broker to help end the long-running feud between Rwanda and Uganda, a diplomatic source confirmed in Kigali.
The meeting is scheduled at the Gatuna border crossing between the two countries on Friday.
The summit will be held between Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweli Kaguta Museveni just a few days after Rwanda and Uganda agreed to start releasing each other’s detained nationals at the third round of ministerial talks which took place in Kigali on February 14 to improve strained relations.
All talks are built on a memorandum of understanding that was signed in Angola in August last year to end the dispute that prompted both countries to accuse the other of spying, political assassinations and meddling.
Relations between the two nations soured since February last year after Rwanda has openly accused neighboring Uganda of offering succour to two foreign-based rebel groups – Rwanda National Congress (RNC) and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
The RNC is a rebel group led by some of Rwanda’s most prominent dissidents including South Africa-based renegade officer Kayumba Nyamwasa.
The FDLR is a rebel group composed in part of former Rwandan soldiers and Hutu militias who fled into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after the massacre of some one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus during the 1994 genocide.
So far a total of 22 Rwandans were released by a Ugandan military court since last month after the prosecution indicated it had lost interest in their case, a move Rwanda welcomed as “a good step” towards normalizing relations.
Among those released by Ugandan court include two terrorist suspects who were involved in recent attacks in Northern Rwanda.
In October last year, according to Rwanda National Police, a group of assailants equipped with crude weapons including knives and pangas and guns attacked a village in Kinigi sector, Musanze District in northern Rwanda, before fleeing back to Uganda.
Following the deportation of two suspects, the Government of Rwanda issued a statement saying it hopes that these actions by authorities will contribute to eliminating all forms of support by Uganda to anti-Rwanda destabilisation elements and terrorist groups and hold accountable officials of all groups operating from Uganda, the statement said.
There are more than 100 Rwandans incarcerated in Uganda, according to officials in Kigali.
Despite recent agreement, Rwandan officials said the travel advisory issued against travelling to Uganda will only be lifted after Ugandan leadership released hundreds of Rwandan citizens illegally arrested in Uganda.
CU/abj/APA