Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Nduhungirehe Counsels DRC’s Okitundu

Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe has counseled DRC’s influencial diplomat to first properly process the contents in the Washington agreement between Rwanda and the DRC.

Léonard She Okitundu a former Foreign Affairs Minister for DRC has claimed in his post on X that the USA has ordered Kigali, to immediately observe an “unconditional, immediate, and effective ceasefire”.

Okitundu referenced UN Security Council Resolution 2773, “demands that the Rwanda Defence Force cease supporting the M23 and withdraw immediately from the territory of the DRC, without preconditions.”

However, Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe has argued that the Congolese diplomat should carefully consider in whole not in part the provisions in the resolution.

“Mr .Minister,You are here making a partial and biased reading of the U.S. State Department’s press release. You are notably omitting the central part of this statement, where the United States first asks the DRC to “[neutralize] immediately the FDLR armed group and the groups associated with it” and then Rwanda to “[withdraw] its troops and military equipment from the DRC.”

Nduhungirehe adds that that “this is, moreover, the sequence that had been initially proposed by one of your predecessors, Christophe Lutundula, during the very first ministerial meeting of the Luanda process, held on March 21, 2024, in the Angolan capital. In that meeting, the Congolese Deputy Prime Minister had indeed committed to first presenting “a plan for the neutralization of the FDLR” and, “consequently” to the neutralization of this armed group (the adverb had been introduced by Lutundula himself), Rwanda would lift its defense measures.”

“It is in the spirit of this reasonable sequence, proposed by the Congolese delegation in Luanda, that “The concept of operations for the neutralization of the FDLR and the disengagement of forces/lifting of Rwanda’s defense measures” was adopted by the Foreign Ministers of the DRC and Rwanda, first in Luanda during the sixth ministerial meeting on November 25, 2024, then in Washington on June 27, 2025.”

Nduhungirehe noted that what is regrettable in this whole affair is that almost two (2) years to the day after Christophe Lutundula’s commitment, the DRC has led us into a vicious circle where successive mediators are obliged to remind it, again and again, of its own commitments.