Trump Brokers Peace Agreement Between Rwanda And Congo At White House

Leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo joined President Donald Trump at the White House to celebrate the United States-brokered peace agreement on Friday.

“Today, the violence and destruction comes to an end and the entire region begins a new chapter of hope and opportunity, harmony and prosperity, and peace,” Trump said.

Trump described the war as the “biggest war on the planet since World War II,” and called it a “shame.”

Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe and Congo Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, who were present in the Oval Office during the meeting, signed the agreement earlier on Friday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the State Department.

“Now we can look forward to a future where my children will look at this moment as the beginning of a new story, a story of prosperity and of peace,” Vice President JD Vance said during the meeting.

Rubio congratulated both countries for “choosing the harder path, which is peace.”

“America should be very proud that the number one voice for peace in the world today is our president,” Rubio added.

The agreement requires Rwandan troops to withdraw from eastern Congo and launch a joint security mechanism within 30 days and a regional economic integration framework within 90 days.

The agreement between the two neighbors will also work to attract investment to the Congo’s mineral-rich provinces of North and South Kivu, which have tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper, and lithium. According to Trump, the United States will get “a lot of the mineral rights” for the resource-rich area of the Congo.

Trump said that his administration would continue working with both countries to ensure all provisions of the agreement are upheld.

“You better do what is in that agreement because if somebody fails to do that, bad things happen,” Trump said.

During the meeting, Trump signed letters to the heads of state of the two nations congratulating them on achieving peace and inviting them to Washington, D.C.

The conflict kicked off when Rwanda sent 7,000 soldiers over its border to Congo in support of the M23 rebels, who seized two large cities in eastern Congo. The conflict is seen as the latest cycle of tension in a decades-old conflict with roots in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, according to Reuters.

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Since January, the escalation has reportedly killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Rwanda has denied helping M23, claiming its forces are acting in self-defense against Congo’s military and ethnic Hutu militiamen who have ties to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which claimed the lives of between 500,000 and a million people, according to estimates.

In Wake Of Israel-U.S. Attacks, Iran’s Regime Starts Executions, Mass Arrests

Iran’s despotic theocratic government is trumpeting that they have arrested over 700 people and executed six accused of belonging to an “Israeli spy network” since Israel’s June 13 attack.

“Reports show men in prison jumpsuits confessing that they were recruited as Israeli spies, along with weapons they were supposedly planning to use. Analysts say the confessions are probably coerced, and an analysis of the images by the FRANCE 24 Observers team found no evidence of any Israeli-made weapons among the supposed seizures,” France 24 reported, adding that Iranian state media revealed at least six men accused of spying for Israel have been executed since the Israeli attack on June 13: Edris Ali, Azad Shojaei, Rasoul Ahmad Mohammad, Madjid Mossayebi, Esmaeil Fekri, and Mohammad Amin Shayesteh.

“In two instances where state media have presented images of these confiscated weapons, the photographs appear to be either fake or staged,” France 24 noted.

“So far, we have seen reports of the arrest of hundreds of people over alleged accusations of espionage, of cooperation with Israel,” Hussein Baoumi, the deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, told CNN on Thursday. “We have also seen the execution of at least six men since the 16th of June on similar accusations. To be absolutely clear, these are people that were — had trials that would run into about 10 minutes in front of revolutionary courts that lack any resemblance of fair trials and where the use of forced confessions is quite worried (sic).”

“What we are seeing really is a continuing of what the Iranian government and authorities have been doing for months, but also for decades and years,” he continued. “I mean, what we have been seeing is that this is a government that has been using arrests and executions to crack down on any sort of opposition. We have seen how the government have used arrests and executions against protesters in recent years. … This needs to be put in its own context, right, which is that this is a government that has lived under massive impunity for decades. Iranian officials feel empowered to do so because they do not expect any sort of retribution or any sort of being held accountable for their crimes.”

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On Thursday, the Iranian exiled women’s organization Association Femme Azadi reported, “Reports confirm the arrest of rabbis and religious leaders in Tehran and Shiraz, accused, without evidence, of ties to Israel.”

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