The EU is the latest western partner to impose aid suspensions against Kigali over an independent United Nations report that said Rwanda was behind a six-month rebellion in Congo’s eastern hills, which has forced 470,000 people to flee their homes.
“It was agreed to freeze the programme of budgetary assistance and to not agree to any supplementary budgetary credit for Rwanda without them giving signs of co-operating,” Jean-Michel Dumond, the EU’s ambassador in Kinshasa, told the U.N.-backed broadcaster Radio Okapi.
A spokesman for the EU in Brussels had said on Monday that existing projects would continue, but that a decision on additional budget support would be delayed until Rwanda’s role in the unrest is clarified.
Although the scale of cuts was not given, the EU website says that the EU agreed a six-year budget support deal with Kigali in 2009, worth up to 175 million euros.
Rwanda has repeatedly denied any involvement with the M23 rebel group in Congo.
Rwanda’s foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo responded to news of the cuts on the social networking site Twitter. “EU suspending ‘new aid’ to Rwanda is either old news or designed to mislead. No such decision has been taken,” she wrote.
Last month President Paul Kagame hit out at donors who cut aid and he launched a so-called “dignity fund” to help to wean the country off its dependence on outside help.