US oversees peace pledge for east Congo, hoping to ease its access to critical minerals

Washington, Apr 26 (AP) US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday oversaw the signing by Congo and Rwanda of a pledge to work toward a peace deal that would ease American access to critical minerals in resource-rich eastern Congo, bringing US influence to bear in a minerals trade that has helped fuel conflict that has killed millions for three decades.

Rubio's participation in the Washington ceremony with his Central African counterparts is an early step in what the Trump administration says is a rebuilding of US foreign policy to focus on transactions of direct financial or strategic benefit to the US.

Congo and Rwanda hope the involvement of the US -- and the incentive of major investment if there's enough security for US companies to work safely in east Congo -- will calm the fighting and militia violence that have defied peacekeeping and negotiation since the mid-1990s.

The risk is that the US becomes involved in or worsens the militia violence, corruption, exploitation and rights abuses surrounding the mining and trade of east Congo's riches.

"A durable peace ... will open the door for greater US and broader Western investment, which will bring about economic opportunities and prosperity," Rubio said, adding that it would "advance President Trump's prosperity agenda for the world".

Congo is the world's largest producer of cobalt, a mineral used to make lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and smartphones. It also has substantial gold, diamond and copper reserves.

Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi has sought out a deal with the Trump administration that could offer the US better access to his country's resources in exchange for US help calming hostilities.

Eastern Congo has been in and out of crisis for decades with more than 100 armed groups, most of which are vying for territory in the mining region near the border with Rwanda. The conflict has created one of the world's largest humanitarian disasters with more than 7 million people displaced, including 1,00,000 who fled homes this year.

Conflict in eastern Congo is estimated to have killed six million people since the mid-1990s, in the wake of the Rwanda genocide. Some of the ethnic Hutu extremists responsible for the 1994 killing of an estimated one million of Rwanda's minority ethnic Tutsis and Hutu moderates later fled across the border into eastern Congo, fuelling the proxy fighting between rival militias aligned to the two governments.

"Today marks not an end but a beginning," Congolese Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner said before signing the broad agreement, which commits Rwanda and Congo to draft a peace accord and work to instil security and a good business environment, allow the return of the millions of displaced and accomplish other goals.

Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said the two rival governments were now addressing the root causes of the hostility between them, the most important of which he said were security and the ability of refugees to return home.

"Very importantly, we are discussing how to build new regional economic value chains that link our countries, including with American private sector investment," he said.

Trump's senior advisor for Africa, Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump's daughter Tiffany, helped broker the US role in promoting security in east Congo, part of an opening that Boulos has said could involve multibillion-dollar investments.

The response from Congolese civil society mixed hope with scepticism.

Rights advocate Christophe Muisa in Goma, a city in east Congo that the powerful, Rwandan-backed M23 armed group seized earlier this year, said the US is the main beneficiary of the deal. He urged his government not to "subcontract its security".

Georges Kapiamba, the president of the Congolese Association for the Access to Justice, a nongovernmental organisation focusing on rights, justice and addressing corruption, said he supported a mineral-and-security deal with the US but worried his own government could blow it by siphoning off the proceeds.

Three months into Trump's second term, his administration and Republican lawmakers have made good on pledges to pare US diplomacy and foreign assistance down to agreements that most directly serve their perception of US strategic and financial interests. The administration has terminated thousands of US aid and development workers and programs that worked more broadly for global development.

In another such transactional deal, the Trump administration is negotiating with Ukraine over a minerals deal that the US is demanding as repayment for past US military support after Russia invaded in 2022.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy initially proposed that deal last fall in hopes of strengthening his country's hand in its conflict with Russia by tying US interests to Ukraine's future.

If the deal the US is envisioning in east Congo goes well, it might end up stabilising the region, said Gyude Moore, a former Cabinet minister in the West African nation of Liberia, now at the Center for Global Development, a think tank in Washington.

Liam Karr, the Africa team lead at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute's critical threats project, said the Trump administration and its advisers know enough to avoid the risks, including those of getting American security forces directly involved.

The larger risk is that American intervention meets the fate of UN and African peace efforts before it, Karr said. "And this just kind of falls flat on its face, and doesn't go anywhere." (AP) SZM

Source: PTI