Rwanda \u200bwarned on Saturday that it was ready to withdraw its troops from Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, \u200cwhere they are helping to counter deadly insurgent attacks, if sufficient international funding for the mission is not assured.<\/p>\n
The deployment in the gas-rich region in 2021, at Mozambique’s request, has helped to stabilise areas previously overrun by an Islamic-linked insurgency, Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande \u200bMakolo said in a post on X.<\/p>\n
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the European Union’s support for the \u200beffort is due to expire in May with no plans for renewal.<\/p>\n
EU officials in Brussels \u2060did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.<\/p>\n
Makolo, referencing the Bloomberg report, said the sustainability of \u200bthe deployment hinges on “adequate, predictable funding”.<\/p>\n
“Should the RDF (Rwanda Defence Force) Command assess that the work being done by Rwandan \u200bSecurity Forces in Cabo Delgado is not appreciated, they would be right to urge the government to end this bilateral counter-terrorism arrangement and pull out,” she added.<\/p>\n
RWANDA HELPED STABILISE GAS-RICH REGION<\/strong><\/p>\n Rwanda’s Foreign Minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe, later echoed those comments in a post on X, \u200bsaying Kigali was “ready to leave Mozambique if our efforts and achievements are not appreciated”.<\/p>\n The Mozambican government did not \u200bimmediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on Makolo and Nduhungirehe’s comments.<\/p>\n Nduhungirehe said Rwanda had invested heavily and lost soldiers to help \u200cstabilise \u2060Cabo Delgado and restore normal life and a key liquefied natural gas project, and should not face criticism, be vilified or sanctioned by countries that benefit from this progress. He did not name the countries.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, the U.S.\u00a0imposed sanctions\u00a0on Rwanda’s army and top military officials over their role in ongoing fighting in eastern Democratic Republic \u200bof Congo. Kigali has long \u200brejected these allegations from \u2060Congo, the United Nations and Western powers that it supports the AFC\/M23 rebel group in the DRC.<\/p>\n Rwanda has so far received about 20 million euros ($23 million) in EU support \u200bfor the counter-insurgency mission in Mozambique, which Makolo said was a fraction of \u200bthe cost being \u2060borne by Kigali. She said the effort had cost Rwanda at least 10 times that amount.<\/p>\n The insurgency in Cabo Delgado, which erupted in 2017, brought construction of TotalEnergies’\u00a0$20 billion LNG project there to a halt. In January, the French energy \u2060company and \u200bthe Mozambican government\u00a0agreed to resume\u00a0construction of the project.<\/p>\n Security has improved \u200bin Cabo Delgado, particularly with the deployment of Rwandan soldiers around Total’s Afungi construction site, officials say. The Islamist insurgency, though weakened, continues to \u200bsimmer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rwanda \u200bwarned on Saturday that it was ready to withdraw its troops from Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, \u200cwhere they are helping to counter deadly insurgent attacks, if sufficient international funding for the mission is not assured. The deployment in the gas-rich region in 2021, at Mozambique’s request, has helped to stabilise areas previously overrun by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11727,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":17,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,2362,1129],"tags":[252,71,140],"class_list":["post-20176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-cabo-delgado","tag-mozambique","tag-rwanda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20177,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20176\/revisions\/20177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}