On Monday, Rwanda said London was obliged to pay the remaining sum from a controversial agreement to receive deported migrants that Britain abandoned last year, as diplomatic tensions run high between the two countries.

Britain announced last week it was suspending most financial aid to Rwanda for backing the M23 group’s offensive in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kigali has called the move “punitive”, and pointed to an abandoned agreement to receive deported illegal migrants from Britain a scheme crafted in 2022 by former prime minister Boris Johnson. When Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer took office in July 2024, he declared the agreement “dead and buried” before it was launched.

Rwanda warned at the time that it would not return the £240 million (US$304 million) already paid by London to Kigali.

A further £50 million was still to be paid. “The UK had asked Rwanda to quietly forego the payment based on the trust and good faith existing between our two nations,” Rwandan government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo posted on X.

“However, the UK has breached this trust through the unjustified punitive measures to coerce Rwanda into compromising our national security and by the inflammatory and irresponsible comments made in parliament by @Lord_Collins, UK Minister for Africa,” she added.

The M23 took up arms again at the end of 2021 — backed by 4 000 Rwandan soldiers according to UN experts — and seized Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, last month after taking control of the North Kivu capital of Goma in late January.

-Nampa/AFP