Rwanda’s State Minister in charge of the East African Community, Olivier Nduhungirehe has accused the Ugandan media of spreading negative propaganda that violates the Luanda agreement, which was meant to end a row between Kigali and Kampala.
The report by the Ugandan media alleged a meeting between President Paul Kagame and Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye.
The reaction comes after Uganda’s government-owned publication, New Vision, published a story on Saturday, alleging that Kagame met Kizza Besigye, a long-time rival of President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Reacting on twitter, the Rwandan top diplomat said such reports “are the kind of lies and negative propaganda that the Ad Hoc Commission of the Luanda Memorandum of Understanding between Rwanda and Uganda committed to stop”.
Nduhungirehe added: “Spread of fake news (by Ugandan media) violates Luanda agreement”.
In late August Kagame and his Ugandan counterpart, Museveni, signed a pact in Angola aimed at ending months of tensions that saw the two neighbours accusing each other of espionage, political killings and trade wars.
The two presidents agreed to respect each other’s sovereignty and that of neighbouring countries.
They also undertook to “refrain from actions conducive to destabilisation or subversion in the territory of the other party (and) acts such as the financing, training and infiltration of destabilising forces”.
Rwanda accused Kampala of supporting rebel groups opposed to the current regime in Kigali, including the Rwanda National Congress (RNC) and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), remnants of Hutu militias blamed for the genocide against the Tutsis in 1994.
CU/abj/as/APA