The Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi urged UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other attendees at next week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Rwanda to pressure its leader Paul Kagame to help resolve tensions between the two African nations over ongoing violence in mineral-rich eastern Congo.
“Given the UK’s recent $150 Million immigration deal struck with Rwanda, we hope that Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be able to leverage his influence,” Tshisekedi said in an emailed statement from his office’s external press agency. The UK government announced a plan to fly asylum seekers who cross the English Channel to Rwanda in April but had to cancel its first deportation flight this week after an intervention by the European Court of Human Rights.
