Louise Mushikiwabo's laughable pretext for next war & Kagame's wild claims about plot to bump Joseph Kabila

The pretext for the first Rwandan and allied forces' intervention in

the Congo was the right of hot pursuit, which is justifiable in

international law.





Then, armed Hutu genocidal maniacs had not only been given shelter on

Congolese soil but also free rein by Mobutu to wage a guerrilla

warfare against the newly established Rwandan regime.





That intervention ultimately resulted in regime change in the Congo.





Rwanda at first denied any direct involvement in its second armed

plundering venture into the Congo, claiming that the armed conflict

was strictly a Congolese civil war.





When this PR talking point became untenable in light of on-the-ground

facts, Rwanda ended up acknowledging the presence of its troops in the

Congo and invoked once again the same principle of the right of hot

pursuit.





After all, the genocidaires and their offsprings had by then morphed

into a vicious terrorist outfit called FDLR--a bane in the Great Lakes

region.





That war was later dubbed by Susan Rice Africa's World War.





Maybe the next military aggression Rwanda seems to be planning will be

called: Africa's First Bloggers-triggered War.





Well, that is, if we are to give credence to the ridiculous and

baseless claims made by Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo.





At a press briefing in New York this past Monday, Mushikiwabo claimed

to be shuddering at the alleged pre-genocide "bigotry" now taking

Congo and the Congolese blogosphere by storm.





"This is very reminiscent of the rhetoric just before the genocide

against the Tutsi in 1994," she said. "Certainly Rwanda keeps a very

close watch on that kind of pronouncements."





Adding:





"In our corner of the world, words quickly become deeds and

anti-Rwanda rhetoric carries grave consequences... More hateful

attacks can be feared as calls for Congolese worldwide to 'kill the

Tutsis' are being propagated over the internet."





This is either baseless paranoia or a cunning pre-emptive pretext for

the next Rwandan aggression.





But either way Mushikwabo isn't fooling anyone.





In my view, this is simply a very clumsy maneuver by Rwanda to attempt

exporting to the regional level the well-known trumped-up charge of

"spreading genocide ideology" that it routinely uses to suppress

domestic opposition.





Opposition leader Victoire Ingabire is rotting in prison on those very

same vaguely convenient charges.





What's even more worrisome is that Mushikiwabo's claims aren't the

only irresponsible utterances being proffered by Rwandan leaders these

past few days.





At his press conference of last week, President Paul Kagame made the

outlandish claim that last year he was approached by some unnamed

western countries to have Rwanda participate in a black ops mission to

bump Joseph Kabila!





Said Kagame:





"During the period of elections last year, this same international

community was running around. They came to us and said President

Kabila was becoming unserious, was not talking to them and that they

look for him and cannot access him. In the end they asked us if he

should be removed either by elections or other means.

I am going to spill some secrets here. At the end of the day, they

can't do anything. He is elected. Some reality has dawned on them and

they have to put up with him because they like Congo more than the

Congolese."





Today in Kinshasa, at his weekly press briefing, DRC Communication

Minister Lambert Mende was asked more specifically whether he believed

Kagame when he charged that "France [Sarkozy] and the UK [Cameron]"

wanted to have Kabila assassinated last year.





(I don't know through what verification process the journo posing the

question went from Kagame's "international community" to "France and

the UK.")





Strangely, Mende said he took Kagame's wild accusations "seriously."





Mende even used them as a cautionary tale for the Congolese media,

civil society and citizens who hold the west as the paragon of

democracy while some in the west show "no respect for the Congolese

people through their will expressed in democratic elections."





Mende was playing the role of the gullible sucker in the sitcom

written by Kagame.





Mende should have instead questioned the timing of Kagame suddenly and

conveniently spilling his explosive secrets just now.





What did Kagame contemporaneously do with his secrets? Did he share

them with DRC authorities? Did he go to the UN with them? Did he

convene a press briefing to denounce a callous plot against a brother

who'd seen his own father assassinated?





The answer to all those questions is obvious: No!





Kagame was with his back against the diplomatic wall when he made

those unsubtantiated allegations.





But these utterances should be a warning to the DRC and the

international community.





For whenever mystagogue Kagame is thus irrationnally contemptuous of

the DRC and the international community, he's all set to make the DRC

pay for some mysterious wrongs inflicted on him and Rwanda!