White House says DR Congo, Rwanda to sign deal Thursday

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump will bring together the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Washington on Thursday to sign a peace agreement, months after an earlier US-brokered deal failed to stop violence.

"President Trump will host the presidents of the Republic of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to sign the historic peace and economic agreement that he brokered," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.

Trump had met in June at the White House with the two countries' foreign ministers as they signed an earlier deal, and has since boasted that DR Congo is one of a number of countries where he has ended war.

But violence has continued, with both sides blaming each other. It was not immediately clear how different the presidential-level agreement will be from the June deal.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame last week publicly accused the Congolese government of delaying the signing of a peace deal.

The region -- rich in minerals vital to new technologies -- has endured three decades of armed conflict, costing hundreds of thousands of lives.

Violence intensified in January when the Rwandan-backed M23 armed group captured swathes of territory, including the cities of Goma and Bukavu.

Rwanda has made the end of its "defensive measures" contingent on Kinshasa neutralizing the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an ethnic Hutu group with links to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

In Kinshasa, the spokeswoman for President Felix Tshisekedi confirmed he would travel to Washington to "ratify a peace accord with Rwanda."

"There will also be an agreement on regional integration that the president has sought since entering office," said the spokeswoman, Tina Salama.

"But respect for the agreement means respect for the sovereignty of our country, the withdrawal of Rwandan forces from Congolese territory and the re-establishment of mutual trust," she said.

Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe confirmed to AFP that Kagame would travel to Washington but declined to give further details.

Trump has voiced hope for securing minerals from the eastern DRC, giving aboost to the United States over China.

In talks last month in Washington, Rwanda and the DRC "recognized lagging progress" in implementation of the June agreement but agreed to work on easing tensions.