By Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will bring leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda together in Washington on Thursday to sign new deals aimed at stabilizing a war-scarred region and attracting Western mining investment.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi are expected to pledge their commitment to an economic integration compact already agreed to last month, as well as a U.S.-brokered peace deal reached in June but still not implemented.
Analysts say U.S. diplomacy has paused escalation of fighting in eastern Congo but has failed to resolve core issues. The M23 rebel group, supported by Rwanda, seized the two largest cities in eastern Congo earlier this year in a lightning advance that raised fears of a wider war.
Trump has been eager to burnish his diplomatic credentials. Since taking office in January, his administration has intervened in conflicts from the Middle East to Ukraine and beyond. Those efforts have generated mixed results, including a deal in Gaza and criticism that the president should focus on rising discontent domestically with his handling of cost-of-living issues.
Ahead of the meeting, the president's name was added to a sign outside the United States Institute of Peace, a government-founded nonprofit his administration tried to seize control of earlier this year. The deal is expected to be signed at the institute.
The agreement, however, may not immediately change the humanitarian crisis on the ground.
In dueling statements on Tuesday, Congo's army and M23 rebels accused each other of violating existing ceasefire agreements that were renewed last month. At a news conference in Washington on Wednesday, Congolese official Patrick Muyaya blamed M23 for recent fighting and said it was "proof that Rwanda doesn’t want peace."
M23 is not expected to attend the Washington meeting. It is also not bound by the terms of any Congo-Rwanda agreement.
"The U.S., in particular, has been successful in at least putting a pin in the conflict so it doesn't continue to escalate," said Jason Stearns, a regional expert and associate professor at Canada’s Simon Fraser University. "All they've done, really, is put a pin in it, and the core issues have not been resolved. And it doesn't look like they're getting much closer to being resolved."
Rwanda denies backing M23. Kigali has said its own forces have acted in self-defense against ethnic Hutu militiamen linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. A group of United Nations experts said in a July report that Rwanda exercises command and control over the rebels.
M23 says it's fighting to protect ethnic Tutsi communities in eastern Congo. The rebel group's advances mark the latest episode in an ethnic rivalry in Congo's eastern borderlands with Rwanda, the source of conflict for three decades.
Two devastating wars in the African Great Lakes region between 1996 and 2003 cost millions of lives. The latest cycle of fighting has killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
A REGION RICH IN MINERALS
The Trump administration has discussed facilitating billions of dollars of Western investment in a region rich in tantalum, tin, tungsten, gold, cobalt, copper, lithium and other minerals. Washington is scrambling globally to secure its access to critical minerals controlled by its rival, China.
Under the Trump-backed agreement, Congo would need to crack down on an armed group opposed to M23, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Rwanda would need to withdraw its forces from Congo. Little apparent progress has been made toward either pledge since the agreement was signed in June.
"We hope that, after the signing, we will see improvement on the ground," said Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe, in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Simon Lewis and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Diane Craft)
