breakfast, clearly referring to the Karegeya case but without naming him.
“No one will betray Rwanda and get away with it. Regardless of who you are, there will be consequences,” he added.
State Department spokeswoman Psaki said these comments by Kagame were viewed with “deep concern” by the United States.
She delivered the diplomatic reprimand as the U.S. military started flying 850 Rwandan troops into Central African Republic, helping to shore up a struggling French and African peacekeeping operation that is trying to halt a wave of killings in the former French colony.
Over the past two decades, several foes of Kagame have been murdered by assassins in Africa and elsewhere, casting a pall of suspicion over his government even as it won lavish praise from Western leaders for being a model aid recipient and a staunch ally in trying to secure peace across restive Africa.
RWANDAN PEACEKEEPING DEFLECTS CRITICISM
Analysts say Kagame bolsters Rwanda’s standing with the West by providing peacekeeping troops for hotspots such as Darfur, South Sudan and more recently, Central African Republic. The United States and most of Europe are loath to send their own troops to such zones, wary of domestic pushback.
“By doing these kind of jobs the Rwandans do sort of defend themselves against accusations of them being naughty in the DRC, or of being less than democratic at home,” South African defence and military analyst Helmoed Romer Heitman, who is an expert on African peacekeeping, told Reuters.
Opponents of Kagame at home and in exile say he runs an authoritarian state that does not flinch from silencing foes.
